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BACKWARD CHILDREN 



BACKWARD CHILDREN 

By 

ARTHUR HOLMES 

Dean of the General Faculty of the Pennsylvania 

State College and Author of The 

Conservation of the Child 



CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH SERIES 

Edited by M. V. O'SHEA 

Professor of Education, The University of Wisconsin 



IQ3 



INDIANAPOLIS 

THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 



Copyright 1915 
The Bobbs-Merrill Company 




PRESS OF 

BRAUNWORTH II CO. 

BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS 

BROOKLYN, N. Yi 



(mOV -8 1915 



>CI.A416270 



TO MY WIFE 

WHOSE QUIET DEVOTION TO STUDY 

UNDER DIFFICULTIES HAS SO MANY TIMES 

INSPIRED MY FALTERING 

DILIGENCE 



EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION 

We are these days reading and hearing a good deal 
about backward children. When is a child backward ? 
May he be backward in some ways and forward in 
others? Are children backward by birth, or are they 
made so by neglect or bad methods of training ? What 
are the signs of backwardness? Is there any way of 
determining accurately whether or not a given child 
is permanently arrested? Could the parent and the 
teacher help an unfortunate child if they could early 
detect his shortcomings ? What part do physical causes 
play in mental and moral backwardness? Is retarda- 
tion in childhood and youth ever due to the use of 
stimulants such as tea, coffee, cocoa and alcoholic bev- 
erages? What part does food play in determining 
whether or not a child will be normal intellectually and 
morally ? 

These questions and others like them are of supreme 
importance to-day to teachers and parents. People are 
seeking light from every source on the problems of 
the backward child. It is the purpose of this volume 
to discuss all these matters in a scientific but at the 
same time simple, concrete and practical way. The 
author, Dean Holmes, has had unusual opportunities 
to study the subject of backwardness in its various 
aspects, theoretical and practical. He is one of the 
very small number of persons in this country who have 
dealt with the subnormal child in the laboratory and 
the clinic as well as in the home and the school. He 
has given us new conceptions of what bacTcwardness 



editor's introduction 

means, and especially of its varieties, its causes, and 
practical remedies therefor in home and school. 

There is not much literature available in English on 
the subject of backward children, and even the few 
books and articles that are accessible deal with the 
subject in a rather general way. Dean Holmes, how- 
ever, as the title of his volume indicates, treats con- 
crete cases of backwardness. He pictures vividly the 
typical varieties of children who give parents and 
teachers trouble. He goes into sufficient detail so that 
the type can be easily recognized. Instead of discuss- 
ing the characteristics of the various types in abstract 
terms, he simply lets us see a genuine representative 
of each type. Physical characteristics are described, 
and shortcomings depicted. The method of treatment 
is given in the same detailed way; and many of these 
cases have been followed by Dean Holmes far enough 
so that he has been able to observe the results of the 
remedies that have been applied. This is the mode of 
procedure throughout the book, which gives it a very 
objective, concrete and practical value. 

The parent, teacher, medical inspector, or clinician 
can use Dean Holmes' book in much the same way 
that a botanist, say, would use a key to the flowers he 
is identifying and classifying. Most books dealing 
with human nature do not describe types so that they 
can be recognized by the non-expert. But this is one 
of the virtues, and it is an important one, of Back- 
ward Children. It has the further virtue of being 
written in a sympathetic spirit. The author feels ten- 
derly for these children who in one way or another 



EDITOR S INTRODUCTION 

can not adapt themselves to the situations in which 
they are placed. No one will doubt that he is eager 
to instruct those who have to deal with such children 
how to discover the cause of their abnormality, 
whether of intellect or of character, and then how to 
apply effective remedies. 

The book is written in a simple graceful style with- 
out affectation or pretense. It is particularly free 
from technical or professional terminology so that the 
layman can read it with ease and with pleasure. 

M. V. O'Shea. 
Madison, Wisconsin. 



AUTHOR'S PREFACE 

This volume is an inductive study of backward chil- 
dren. It presents in a series of concrete illustrations 
studies of cases to exemplify the principles and meth- 
ods underlying the diagnosis, treatment and training 
of backward children. It aims to describe the cases as 
simply, non-technically and humanly as the subject- 
matter will permit, in order to be of service to the 
care-taker of children who does not have a technical 
education in abnormal psychology. The style is pur- 
posely as popular in vein as possible without offending 
scientific principles or sacrificing scientific exactness in 
essentials. 

The larger consideration is given to those backward 
children who can be reclaimed. The feeble-minded 
are touched upon only incidentally and for the purpose 
of showing the dangers to society lurking in their neg- 
lect and misunderstanding by the public. Their sepa- 
ration from the temporarily backward requires a clin- 
ical diagnosis of each child. How far such a diagnosis 
can be carried by the ordinary layman is illustrated 
and explained. 

For aid and advice in writing this volume I am in- 
debted to many friends, to whom, on account of the 
form of the book, acknowledgment can not always be 
made in the proper place. Miss Elizabeth E. Farrell, 
Doctor William Burdick and Doctor L. W. Rapeer 
most kindly read portions of the manuscript and made 



AUTHOR S PREFACE 

valuable suggestions ; Mr. Charles K. Taylor permitted 
me to use some of his material on coffee-drinking and 
on manual training ; Miss Effie Reimensnyder read the 
whole manuscript. To the Psychological Clinic at the 
University of Pennsylvania, of which Doctor Lightner 
Witmer is founder and director, and with whom I was 
associated a number of years, I owe a large number 
of the illustrative cases used. To the editor, Doctor 
O'Shea, I am indebted most of all, for his patience 
and uniform courtesy, for his suggestions and practical 
direction, and for his unfailing inspiration. 

My hope is that the volume may be of help to those 
who are striving to help the slow boys and girls in the 
home or the school, and that it may contribute its mite 
toward a better understanding of these unwilling lag- 
gards and a more sympathetic support of their efforts 
to march with the great army of their more fortunate 
fellows. 

Arthur Holmes. 

State College, Pa. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I Measuring Rods for Children 1 

The individual standard for measuring retarda- 
tion illustrated — The social standards in the home 
.—Pedagogical standards of retardation — Age and 
grade — Progress — Playground standards — Scien- 
tific standards — Their objection — Binet tests — 
Standards in general — Meaning of backwardness 
depends upon standards — Backwardness some- 
times good. 

II Varieties of Backward Children 18 

The two great classes of backward children illus- 
trated — Temporarily and permanently retarded 
children — Those who immediately recover lost 
ground after medical treatment — Those who re- 
quire brief special training after medical treat- 
ment — Those who require long and patient train- 
ing after medical treatment. 

III Typical Retardation Due to Physical Defects 36 
The story of Joe — The diagnosis of his case — 
Study of his environment — The physical exami- 
nation — His appearance, posture, hair, nose, teeth, 
mouth — Mental symptoms of adenoids — Reading 
tests — Eye and ear tests — Adenoid and tonsil op- 
eration — Other treatments — Training — Constitu- 
tional treatment — Results. 

IV Minds in Straight Jackets 58 

Many types of mind among backward children — 
The slow boy — His school troubles — Success in 

his profession — The boy with the mechanical turn 
— Saved by high school manual work — The girl 
with almost no interests — The developmen-t and 
growth of the germ-interest. 



CO NTENTS— Co»i//«af ^ 

CHAPTER PAGE 

V Bad and Backward 83 

Badness sometimes causes mental retardation — 
The fighter— A hopelessly bad girl — A pseudo- 
moral imbecile — Laziness — A truant made and 
cured — A truant born. 

VI Retardation Due to Environment 110 

The causes of mental retardation reside either 
within or without the child— Minute and ridicu- 
lous causes — Unhygienic home conditions — Coffee, 
tea, candies and sweets, as causes — Under-nour- 
ishment — The influence of the gang — The home 
and the gang — A boy among bad companions — 
The conversion of a gang— The gang-spirit organ- 
ized for study. 

VII The Backward Child in the Home 134 

A case of no home training and its results — A 
diagnosis necessary — Home training in self-help 
— Chores for boys and girls — The teacher in the 
home — Feeding children — The amounts and kinds 
of foods — Surgical treatment for special cases — 
The discovery of simple childish diseases. 

VIII The Clinical Diagnosis of Backward Children 162 
The process of diagnosis as a whole— Definition 
of feeble-mindedness — What we measure in clas- 
sifying backward children — Mental potentialities 
— The physical examination and its twofold pur- 
pose — The physical marks of a typical imbecile 
— General appearance and organs — Mental tests — 
Mental signs of permanent backwardness — Slow 
in mental development — Various stages of devel- 
opment — Particular mental defects. 

IX The Teacher's Diagnosis 190 

It is difficult to observe a child — Two cases mis- 
judged by exterior appearances — The mental con- 
tent — The child's interests — Play — Some particu- 
lar instincts — Temperaments — The types of 
perceptions — Intellectual, volitional and emo- 
tional children — The intellectual processes and 
their peculiarities. 



CO NTENTS— Co«ft««^^ 

CHAPTER PAGE 

X The Teacher and Equipment for a Special 

Class 219 

The vital kind of teacher illustrated — Two types 
of teachers — A teacher's physical attributes — Her 
temperament — Her special training — Her age and 
experience — Need of teachers — Rooms — Their lo- 
cation — Equipment in detail — Hints for courses. 

Index 245 



BACKWARD CHILDREN 



BACKWARD CHILDREN 

CHAPTER I 

MEASURING RODS FOR CHILDREN 

"^TT^HERE is a boy," said a school-teacher re- 
1 cently, pointing to a pale-faced, high-browed, 
well-dressed pupil, "who ought to be at the head of 
his class, and here he is just above the average!" 
At such an unpolitic speech made to a visitor in his 
presence, the boy dropped his head and a deep flush 
of shame went over his pallid features. The visitor 
became interested and inquired into the matter. He 
found that the boy was the only child of the lead- 
ing physician in the town, a man who had done well 
materially in his profession, but much better in his 
matrimonial venture. He had married the richest 
young woman in the neighborhood, a girl noted for 
her beauty and for her ambition. She persuaded 
her husband to try his fortune in a large city, which 
he did for a few years, but, seemingly, he did not 
succeed there, and upon the death of his father-in- 
law, the family returned to the wife's native town. 
The Individual Standards. — After Harold's 
birth, his mother's ambition, disappointed in its so- 

1 



2 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

cial aims, turned to her son, and his education was 
begun almost from the cradle. He went through 
the kindergarten, with its training supplemented at 
home by all the forcing processes his mother could 
command. When the family returned to their na- 
tive village, Harold was entered in the public school 
with his mother's certain conviction that, having had 
such exceptional opportunities at home and such per- 
fect preparation in kindergarten, he would easily ex- 
cel his less fortunate fellow pupils. 

But his mother was doomed to a second life-dis- 
appointment. The boy developed into only an or- 
dinary student. He kept up in his classes, did 
average work in all his studies, but was not brilliant 
in any. Though his mother ceaselessly urged him 
on and held frequent conferences with his teachers, 
though she superintended his lesson preparation at 
home, and was often present at his recitations in 
school, still Harold moved on only at the usual pace. 
Of course the school and the teachers came in for 
their share of blame delivered in a thoroughly polite 
and half-veiled way, but delivered nevertheless. The 
argument was this : Considering his exceptional op- 
portunities and the intellectual superiority of at 
least one of his parents, Harold ought to be much 
farther advanced than he is. In short, Harold was 
compared with himself or with what he might have 
been, and he was found wanting. Therefore, he 
was called "backward," was nagged by his mother 
and twitted by his teachers, and saved only from 



MEASURING RODS 3 

open rebellion or complete depression by that same 
blessed mediocrity which called down all the con- 
demnation upon his head. Possibly, also, his kindly 
father helped by his comforting way of hinting to 
his son that, though he was not so brilliant as he was 
expected to be, yet he was not so bad as he might 
have been. 

Harold was judged by the individual standard. 
That means that any one who is not developed to 
his fullest capacity is retarded. His fullest capacity 
is what he might have been according to the judg- 
ment of himself or of others who know him. Ac- 
cording to that standard all sincere persons must 
feel themselves retarded; for none of us will affirm 
that we have had the fullest opportunity possible, 
nor that we have availed ourselves fully of the op- 
portunity we did have. Hence, by that standard, \ve 
are all backward. 

The Social Standard in the Home. — Quite dif- 
ferent is the story of another boy who lived in a 
family of two brothers and two sisters in an ordi- 
nary home where the children had the usual liberty 
to follow their own bent. Ernest was the unusual 
child. He was the dreamer of the family, so called 
because of his vacant and aimless way of doing 
things at home. At an age when his brothers and 
sisters could get up in the morning, wash their faces, 
comb their hair, and dress themselves without aid 
from any one, helpless Ernest would have to be 
pulled out of bed by his energetic mother, washed 



4 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

and partly dressed by her, and almost driven down 
to breakfast. When he went to school, he was 
usually late and always the last. The distraction of 
that mother can well be imagined. She had to pre- 
pare breakfast for her husband who had to go to 
work, and get ready five children with all their odds 
and ends, one of whom was so exasperatingly slow 
that a saint would be driven to desperation by him. 
In other home affairs, Ernest was the same. He 
either would not or could not learn to do the chores 
required of him; he could hardly ever run an errand 
and come back on time; he would forget half the 
articles he should bring from the store ; he dawdled 
over everything; he never touched a tool or per- 
formed a piece of manual work heartily and ener- 
getically. He was never so happy as when he could 
curl up in a big chair or sprawl on the floor over a 
book. 

At school his reputation was different. While 
still slow-moving and phlegmatic, his mind worked 
with remarkable precision; his ideas were translu- 
cent; his memory retentive; knowledge came easily 
to him; lessons were treated seriously, and though 
Ernest took his own time about beginning them, 
once he was started, his attention was absorbing and 
he never stopped studying until the printed word 
was a part of the fiber of his being. As a result, he 
was easily the best pupil of his class, the delight of 
his teachers, the pride of the school. At home, his 
practical father and mother shook their heads in 



MEASURING RODS 5 

grave doubt ; at school his teachers predicted for him 
a rosy future. 

Was Ernest really backward or not ? What is the 
reason for such a clash of judgments? Simply this : 
he was the victim of a double standard of judg- 
ment in retardation. At home he was behind his 
brothers and sisters in self-help and chores. He 
learned how to do them slowly and he continued to 
do them slowly and slovenly after he learned them. 
At school he was deliberate in his study but he was 
gifted with one of those rare minds that proceeds 
without a halt in the acquisition of knowledge and 
retains without a flaw what it learns. Therefore, 
in the long run he learned many times more than the 
other pupils. As a result, at home, he was "re- 
tarded"; at school, "advanced." 

More Accurate Standards. — Because family 
judgments are lacking in exactness, men have tried 
to formulate others. Because a child goes to school 
and because in school backwardness becomes such a 
vital matter, the problem of pedagogical retardation 
has received much attention. Two general stand- 
ards or criteria for judging pedagogical retardation 
have been used. The first, called the age-and-grade 
method, calls all children normal who are six years 
old and in the first grade, or seven years old and in 
the second grade, and so on ; but in actual practise it 
allows one year more than the usually allotted time 
for a grade before calling a child retarded. Gen- 
eralized, the matter might be stated thus: Every 



6 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

child that begins school at the legal age and is pro- 
moted regularly with its class is normal ; every child 
who is two years or more behind the grade it should 
be in for its age is backward. The two-years' allow- 
ance instead of one is made because the legal age for 
entering school varies with locality; because again 
some children start to school six months or more 
after their legal age for entrance ; and because, still 
further, it has been found that a smaller allowance 
would place an overwhelmingly large number of 
school children in the backward list. Even allowing 
the two-year rule, about one-third of the school chil- 
dren in the United States are retarded. 

The Second Criterion is the Progress of the 
Scholar. — According to this standard a normal 
pupil is one who takes one year, or the regularly 
scheduled time, and no more, to complete a grade, 
no matter how old he is when he starts to school. At 
first sight this seems to be a much juster criterion. 
For it would appear, and it has been continually ar- 
gued, that the older child who begins school-life 
later than he ought legally to do will make more 
rapid progress in his work and ultimately either 
catch up with or else pass by the younger pupil. The 
two sides of the question have been treated by Doc- 
tor Leonard Ayres, who comes to the conclusion that 
the two methods really do not disagree very ma- 
terially in their results. One is as fair to the facts 
as the other. "Neither the age standard nor the 
progress standard of measuring retardation," says 



MEASURING RODS 7 

Doctor Ay res, "exaggerates the extent of the evil. 
On the average, results for a considerable number 
of cities are equal by both methods." The whole 
problem which at first sight seems reducible to such 
simple terms, turns out to be exceedingly complex. 
It will take years of patient labor to arrive at cer- 
tain and well-accepted results. 

The Standards of the Playground. — In the case 
of Ernest just described, it will be noted that both 
his parents and his teachers tacitly assumed that the 
real criterion of backwardness lay beyond his school 
and his home in the great world in which he would 
work out his ultimate success in life. His parents, 
knowing only one avenue to success and that man- 
ual labor, were very dubious about their dreaming 
son's future. His teachers, victims of the limita- 
tions of their profession, assumed that there was 
also only one road to success and that lay through 
book-learning. 

Much more significant for the future, it seems to 
me, is the estimate made of a child by his fellows on 
the playground. There are many reasons for this, 
but I will point out only two. First, regarding the 
child himself, he is acting spontaneously; he is urged 
on by the forces resident within himself; he is try- 
ing, all unconscious of theories about education, or 
any future ambitions, or any artificial rewards or 
punishments, to express all that is in him. Further, 
it is his own world in which he is making his place. 
Therefore, it fits him better than any other that he 



8 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

is compelled to live in. Taking these two phases of 
play together, we see the child as he is. We can 
therefore make a better and surer estimate of him 
than when he only partially exhibits his real nature. 
We know that in play he is not holding back re- 
serves of energies; that he is not failing because he 
lacks interest, because he is indifferent through wil- 
fulness or a desire to do something else. In play 
he expresses his last atom of energy; he will run 
his race, or chase his ball, until he falls in his tracks. 
All of us have heard of girls who dropped dead 
jumping the rope. None of us has ever heard of a 
girl w4io dropped dead washing dishes. No girl 
can. She will faint first and so save her life. Play 
alone can exhaust all her energies. Therefore, we 
can judge the child more truly on the playground 
than anywhere else, both for the present and the fu- 
ture. Still, the judgment is our judgment. 

Another reason why the play standard is valuable 
is this : from it we get the judgment of the child's 
peers. Their judgment is not explicit ; perhaps they 
may never have had the slightest conscious acquaint- 
ance with retardation in their lives, nor even know 
how to pronounce the word; they may not know 
that a comrade is backward, but they feel it, and 
act it. As they react upon one another in their jos- 
tling play-world each atom of humanity inevitably 
settles into its proper place with the fatality of po- 
tatoes on the way to market. As the forces of na- 
ture fit the stars to their undeviating orbits and the 



' MEASURING RODS 9 

glaciers to their rocky beds, so do these youngsters 
fit each companion to his groove. Such classifica- 
tions of children are as accurate as they are uncon- 
scious and as significant as they are unprejudiced. 
Fathers and mothers may be blinded by their love, 
teachers by the mechanics of their profession, and 
neighbors by their ambitions for their own offspring, 
but the clear-eyed citizens of boy-ville and girl-ville 
look on one another without pride or prejudice and 
judge one another without fear or favor in the larg- 
est and most general aspects of their lives. 

Not too much weight can, therefore, be given to 
the place secured by a child in his own world of un- 
supervised play. The difficulty of applying such 
judgments to our problem lies in the fact that they 
so far have not been formulated. They are not only 
vague but unexpressed in language or symbol. As 
yet, no genius among adults has arisen to make them 
exact, to transform them into systems and invent 
apparatus for making the standards of the play- 
ground applicable to mental diagnosis. 

Science Will Refine Upon Popular Standards. 
— Science may come and observe these popular 
judgments; she may some day take them and refine 
them and erect them into systems, but it is doubtful 
if she can ever really improve upon them. The rea- 
son for her helplessness is to be found in the vague- 
ness and incomprehensiveness of the "general intel- 
ligence" to be measured. What is intelligence? Is 
it a single faculty? Surely not; for idiots often 



10 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

possess marvelous musical and mathematical facul- 
ties. Is it reason? Philosophers reason to perfec- 
tion, yet are the most impracticable people; so im- 
practicable that they may starve where another man 
will live well. For witness, read DeQuincey's ac- 
count of his starving period in London, when he 
walked the streets for days, being kept alive only 
by the earnings of his Anne, and never once did it 
occur to him even to ask for work ! Is intelligence 
one faculty or many faculties? Is it not more a 
proper balance among many faculties? If it is, and 
that seems to be the truest answer, then immediately 
it can be seen how difficult it will always be to meas- 
ure this balance under artificial conditions. Added 
to this is the fact that any mental examination must 
also labor under the circumstance that even in the 
smallest bit of human knowledge all the mental 
processes are involved ; that it is impossible to isolate 
reasoning, or imagination, or volition, and to con- 
sider each one separately and apart from other 
processes, as in an ideal laboratory experiment. The 
child is a unit ; his consciousness is a unit. Certain 
phases of the mental process may be emphasized at 
times, but the others are there and, what is of su- 
preme importance to the teacher or parent, these, 
for the moment unobserved and unimportant proc- 
esses, may be the very ones that will make the child 
eventually a famous and successful man. For ex- 
ample, success in life most frequently depends on 
coolness and readiness in times of great crises. Ar- 



MEASURING RODS 11 

tificial tests in clinics and schoolrooms can not, by 
their nature, afford such situations, while play pro- 
duces over and over again as a part of its very es- 
sence critical moments full of originality and burn- 
ing with excitement. 

The Binet-Simon Standard. — Besides the fore- 
going standards many others have been worked out 
for the more accurate measurement of the typical 
child's mind. One of the most noted in America is 
the system of the Frenchman Binet, made famous 
here chiefly by the extensive investigations carried 
on by Doctor Goddard of the training school at 
Vineland, New Jersey. These tests attempt to de- 
scribe in about five simple ways the normal child of 
any age up to fifteen years. The descriptions are 
proposed in the form of questions or tasks and in 
the results thus obtained. The so-called normal child 
will answer the questions and perform the tasks, or 
certain proportions of them, in certain ways. The 
backward child will not perform the tasks or answer 
the questions suitable to his age, but only those suita- 
ble to a younger age. These standards have the 
qualities of simplicity and of giving their measure- 
ments in the ages of normal children. 

The danger, illustrated by all the examples in this 
chapter, of judging persons to be backward when 
tested by only one standard, appears strikingly in 
the following single test by the Binet method. A 
class of school-teachers at a summer school were 
tried by the twelve-year-old tests in the older Binet 



12 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

series. Not one of twenty-five adult, well- trained, 
experienced teachers, whose mentality was unim- 
peachable, could pass all the tests and some of them 
failed ignominiously in a majority of them. This 
statement of an experiment is not intended as a crit- 
icism of the Binet tests themselves, but as an illus- 
tration again of the vital truth not too often to be 
reiterated that backwardness itself and the signifi- 
cance of backwardness depends upon the standard 
used to measure it. 

The Standards Should Be Clearly Stated and 
Studied. — So it appears that the standards for 
measuring backwardness are many. This condition 
arises from the nature of the case. Unlike meas- 
urements of spatial or material objects we are 
dealing with more or less non-spatial and extremely 
complex dimensions. We can not take our child to 
some place where a norm is kept and compare him 
with that ideal. If we had to measure a stick we 
could lay down a yard-measure upon it, and see if 
they agreed. If our measuring stick was in doubt, 
we could take it to Washington and have it tested to 
the millionth of an inch and be sure that it was ac- 
curate. Unfortunately, in dealing with living chil- 
dren, many difficulties are in the way of such a 
simple process. First, much of our measuring is 
subjective and not objective; secondly, the child is 
such a complex institution, so fearfully and wonder- 
fully made that to classify one child requires lit- 
erally innumerable measurements ; thirdly, and espe- 



MEASURING RODS 13 

cially, no real, live, normal child exists in all the 
world to whom we can compare our backward child. 
If only somewhere, in some sort of an institution, a 
whole row of perfectly normal children, complete 
for their age in all their physical, mental, moral and 
social qualities, were kept on exhibition, and we 
could take any suspected child there and compare 
him with the model of the same age, then our prob- 
lem would be marvelously simplified. But such 
norms do not exist — "Thank goodness," we may 
almost say under our breath. For if they did all 
mental progress would be at an end. Beyond them 
our children could not hope to go. Woe, yea, even 
worse woe than now, unto any child who would dare 
to be original ! No, no standard of childish perfec- 
tion exists ; and though on that account our problem 
of measuring backwardness is made inimitably 
harder, on the whole we agree with the child-world 
and are glad it is so. 

The Meaning of Backwardness.^ — From the 
foregoing discussion two important questions may 
ai'ise. First, what is backwardness ? It is altogether 
a relative matter and not an absolute condition. It 
is not a mental defect, nor a physical defect, nor a 
judgment of Providence, nor a quality of the indi- 
vidual inherited or acquired. It is merely a relation. 
The backward child is behind somebody or lower 
than, he ought to be in some arbitrary scale, accord- 
ing to somebody's judgment. The mere fact that a 
child is backward is seen immediately as soon as the 



14 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

standard of measurement is stated. Until that is 
stated backwardness in itself and by itself has prac- 
tically no significance. That brings up the second 
question: Is backwardness always to be deplored? 
Not by any means. 

To be behind does not always mean something un- 
desirable. Sometimes it keeps children out of dan- 
ger, as it did the poor little cripple who hobbled along 
behind the other children following the Pied Piper, 
and so got to the mountain too late to be swallowed 
up forever. That backward child might be taken as 
an example for backwardness in many other re- 
spects. "Your boy is backward," begins the school- 
visitor, and mother's face falls and her forehead 
wrinkles, "in smoking," or "swearing," adds the vis- 
itor, and mother's face brightens. All depends on 
what a child is backward in; and not on the mere 
fact that he is backward. To express it otherwise, 
all depends on the standard of backwardness. Be- 
fore the standard is known the word "backward" 
means just one thing: the backward one is lagging 
behind something. As soon as the standard is 
known, then the implication is clear, and the back- 
wardness is seen to be desirable or undesirable. I 
have actually seen a young girl of fascinating appear- 
ance and an excellent mind brought to a psycholog- 
ical clinic because, according to the strait and strict 
standards of conduct in her community and the 
people who had her under their control, she dis- 



MEASURING RODS 15 

played tendencies to degeneracy. The truth was that 
the girl was simply forward in company, and for- 
ward too, only according to the exceedingly con- 
servative judgment of her community. Certainly it 
would have been better for her, and for all girls, to 
be "backward" rather than "forward" in society. 

In one of the old school-readers there used to be 
a story about a famine, a bread-line, a crowd of el- 
bowing children, and one little girl, "with patched 
clothes neat and clean," who always waited with a 
heavenly meekness till all the other children had 
seized the largest loaves from the unscientifically 
managed charity and had departed, leaving Mar- 
garet to take the last and smallest loaf. She was a 
backward child, but her backwardness was not the 
kind to be condemned. Indeed, such a fine quality 
was it that one day the rich baker slipped a gold- 
piece into the smallest loaf and when backward 
Margaret, as usual, took what was rejected, she 
found a fortune, and received from her benefactor 
both the full right to the coin and a homily upon 
the virtue of backwardness. With this old-fashioned 
tale we will leave the standards of backwardness 
and the many measuring-rods applied to this class of 
children, hoping that the truth of the lesson will 
come out with fresh force, that all our modern agi- 
tation on retardation will not obscure, namely, that 
backwardness is not wholly or always bad and that 
it needs to be studied in each individual case to de- 



16 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

termine its exact nature. To put our inductive study 
into a form easily assimilable we append the follow- 
ing summary of standards : 

I. Individual Standards, — A backward diild is one 
who is not so far advanced as he ought to be, 
when his birth and opportunities are considered. 
II. Social Standards. 

A. Popular Standax-ds. 

1. In the Home. — A backward child in the 

home is one who learns at a later age than 
that of his brothers and sisters how to 
walk, talk, eat, dress himself, etc. His 
parents' judgment is the measure. 

2. In the Neighborhood. — A backward child is 

one who, in the judgment of the neighbors-, 
is behind the other children in their activi- 
ties. Neighbors usually judge less merci- 
fully than parents and the backwardness is 
more pronounced if it is noticed by the 
neighbors. 

3. On the Playground. — A backward child is 

one who can not play the games children 
of his age can play, and who therefore 
plays with younger children. 

B. Scientific Standards. 

1. Among Nations. — A child is backward only 

when he falls behind the average for his 
own race or nation. This is the anthro- 
pological standard. 

2. In School. 

a. The Age Standard. — A backward child is 
one who, from any cause whatsoever, 
is two years or more behind the grade 
he ought to be in for his age. The ped- 
agogical standard is a child who begins 
school at the legal age and is promoted 
regularly with his class. Pedagogical 



MEASURING RODS 17 

retardation is a fact, and has nothing to 
do with causes, is not always a detri- 
ment, and should not be condemned un- 
til the causes are known. 
b. The Progress Standard. — ^According to 
this standard a backward child is one 
who takes longer than the regularly 
scheduled time to complete one grade, 
no matter how old he is. In the long 
run, with many pupils, these two stand- 
ards give about the same results. 
3. In General Intelligence. — ^According to sev- 
eral systems like the Simon-Binet, De 
Sanctis, and others, a backward child is 
one who can not answer certain sets of 
prescribed questions and do certain tasks 
presumably fitted to his years. The stand- 
ard child is one who can do these tasks and 
give these answers.* 



* Much of the material in Chaps. 1 and 8 has appeared in the 
author's The Conservation of the Child, J. B. Lippincott Co., 
Phila., which treats the diagnosis of backward children fully. 



J- 



CHAPTER II 

VARIETIES OF BACKWARD CHILDREN 

SOME years ago two new pupils arrived on the 
same day in the special class of a public school. 
Whence they came, by what pedagogic highways and 
byways they had reached their destination and what 
educational vicissitudes they had suffered on the 
journey, are only of secondary importance to our 
purpose of tracing their succeeding history. It is 
sufficient to say that their schooling began at the 
usual age, in the usual public schools, and had lasted 
six years, leaving them both at the age of twelve in 
the fourth grade. To all appearances, they sprang 
from about the same social conditions. Their dress 
and manners marked them as coming from ordinary 
homes of working people. Their names we will call 
John and Mary because those are not their names. 
Carelessly viewed, they were just two quite ordi- 
nary, retarded children, superficially alike, noted 
only for the fact that they helped to swell the thirty- 
three and seven-tenths per cent, of backward chil- 
dren in American schools. 

Their Personal Appearance. — To the hasty ob- 
server all difference in personal appearance favored 

18 



VARIETIES 19 

Mary. She was cleaner and neater, her face and 
hands were washed, and her hair carefully parted, 
smoothed and tied back with a red ribbon in a large 
bow, the loops of which stood out on each side of 
her head like butterfly wings. She was pretty, quiet, 
ladylike in her manners, and very well behaved. She 
came to the special teacher with a good report for 
conduct and much praise for her serious efforts to 
learn. As she sat there on the seat that first day, 
Miss M., the special teacher, found her heart going 
out to her in a quiet pity, and she made up her mind 
then and there that she would save this fine girl from 
any further stigma of failure, if it was at all pos- 
sible. 

John was not nearly so fortunate. His personal 
appearance was altogether against him. Boy-like, 
his face and hands were not very clean, his hair was 
unkempt, his clothes were untidily worn. His man- 
ner and manners were both bad. His face wore a 
sullen and sometimes defiant look, and when he 
moved, it was with a listless, unwilling, slouchy gait. 
When he spoke his voice was peculiarly flat and 
dead, but frequently rising quickly and easily into 
a querulous, irritated tone. The shape of his nose 
and his open mouth were sure signs of adenoids, 
past or present, which his teacher later found, had 
been just recently removed, so recently that the other 
signs — crooked teeth, dulled hearing, stoop shoul- 
ders, flat chest and general debility, with the lus- 
terless eye and vacuous face — were still very much 



20 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

in evidence. He came with no such good report for 
conduct as Mary had brought. By his former teach- 
ers he was counted careless, irritable, inattentive, 
and had been getting worse instead of better in the 
last years of his schooling, despite the hope of im- 
provement through the adenoid operation. The 
hope was slow to materialize and John was sent to 
the special class. 

The Results. — Space and time will not permit 
me to give every detail of these two children's peda- 
gogical treatment and training in the next two years. 
It must suffice to say that they received the teaching 
in a modern special class. The manual work was 
first tried. Here in the beginning Mary distinctly 
excelled John. She seemed to have a positive genius 
for basket weaving. The first one she ever produced 
in her life — a small, bowl-like structure — was as 
neatly woven, as symmetrically turned and shaped 
as any teacher's heart could desire, and loud were 
the praises, both in school and at home, that the 
amiable and lovable Mary received for her evident 
skill and application. 

Poor John started bravely, but his interest slack- 
ened, his fingers got in his way, he made mistakes, 
became excited, then irritated, had to do it over 
again, and finally finished a pitiable specimen, out 
of shape, begrimed with sweat and tears, and not 
fit for exhibition anywhere. It was a sorry sight 
though the extremities of its faults were mercifully 
covered by the patient charity of his teacher and her 



VARIETIES 21 

assurance, into which her heart could not enter very 
warmly, that he would do better next time. 

In many other exercises it was not different. Wher- 
ever rhythm in any form was involved, Mary fell 
into it naturally and smoothly. In singing she was 
not only quick to catch the tune, and to follow it in 
her sweet, clear voice, but she readily committed the 
words to memory. She could recite poetry, too, and 
loved the weekly memory-gems required in school. 
Her reading was excellent, in fact, good enough to 
permit her to read easily in a higher grade. Her 
writing, too, was good in the sense that the letters 
were well formed and fair to the eye. On the whole, 
as Miss M. said, if it had not been for her hopeless- 
ness in arithmetic and a certain lack of vigor in at- 
tacking original situations and in dealing with ab- 
stract problems of all kinds, Mary was one of the 
most satisfactory pupils in the class. At least. Miss 
M. said that at first. In the course of two years 
she was surprised to note how little Mary improved 
in these respects. By dint of much personal atten- 
tion in school and at home, she did make some prog- 
ress. Always docile and earnest, she won sympathy 
and approbation everywhere. As it was evident that 
she could never learn much arithmetic, it was de- 
cided, that since she was a girl, she should be pro- 
moted without it. Her other mental work, depend- 
ent upon memory, was fair, and her manual work 
always most excellent. For that she was highly 
praised, and from that commendation, together with 



22 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

the adolescent ripening of her mental powers, came 
a new-found confidence, which diffused itself 
through all her other efforts, and united with her 
unfailing willingness, carried her back into the 
grades, and at fifteen Mary left school, not grad- 
uated, but with the praise of her teachers and with 
no suspicion that she was deficient except in one or 
two restricted, and, to a girl, not very important 
subjects. Yet within two years after Mary left 
school and went to work in a box factory, she was 
sent by the juvenile court to an institution for the 
feeble-minded to be all the rest of her life, a ward of 
the state, an apathetic moron, wrecked in life and 
morals, a source of sorrow to her parents, and a po- 
tential danger to society. 

As for John, he stumbled along through the first 
months of his special class with varying successes 
and failures, in which failures predominated. The 
effect of his failures upon the patience of his 
teacher was heightened by his irritability, wilfulness, 
carelessness, and general bad behavior. Miss M. 
struggled on with him only because a few gleams of 
ability here and there occasionally flashed out of his 
otherwise bunglesome efforts. Basket weaving, he 
did not like; singing, he hated with a schoolboy's 
lusty hatred of anything cultural and beautiful. 
Wood-working was more to his liking and his ac- 
complishm.ents therein really saved his career. As 
he worked at carpentry through the months, his 
physical condition improved; he took pride in his 



VARIETIES 23 

work ; he was anxious to be at it and he did his les- 
sons in books faithfully so as to get to the bench. 
Gradually his whole being and activities improved 
and in two years he went back to the grades, gripped 
the meaning of things with vigor, developed into a 
healthy boy, entered a manual training high school 
at sixteen, and after one year there went out into 
the world to become a joiner-apprentice in a car 
shop, where he is to-day, a promising young man. 

What was the difference between these two that 
made such a tragic difference in their lives? Simply 
and only the difference between permanent and tem- 
porary retardation, between feeble-mindedness and 
pedagogical backwardness due to removable defects ; 
and this difference might have been detected by the 
skilled teacher and much of its terrible consequences 
to the girl and to her parents and to society might 
have been anticipated and prevented. More than 
that, these are only two of the many cases identical 
in the one great essential, coming before the teach- 
ers of our schools every day. Because teachers do 
not understand that from one-half of one per cent, 
to four per cent, of their pupils are feeble-minded, 
and because they do not have the ability to recognize 
slight degrees of feeble-mindedness, they not infre- 
quently labor with such unfortunate pupils only to 
hide their defects temporarily and to expose them 
eventually to the rigors of the world peculiar to such 
defective mental and moral natures. 

Two Great Varieties of Retardation. — Now 



24 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

that we have seen something of the meanings attach- 
ing to the word "backward," we will turn to a study 
of the varieties of the phenomenon itself. Com- 
plexity and not simplicity confronts us, a complexity 
in the condition itself to be overcome as far as pos- 
sible by simplicity in classification. For our purpose 
a very simple and untechnical classification of back- 
ward children might be made, one that will both 
seize upon the essential difference between two great 
classes of the retarded ones, and will also at the 
same time serve the practical end of education. That 
end is the future of the backward child. We want 
him to grow up and take his place in the world as a 
self-supporting and self-respecting citizen. Can he 
do it? With all his present defects, mental and 
physical, can he be so treated and so taught that 
eventually he will become a full-fledged citizen of 
the republic? That is our practical question and 
upon it we can base our simple classification of all 
backward children into those temporarily backward 
and those permanently backward. The first will in- 
clude all those children retarded on account of re- 
movable defects; the second will include all that 
growing army of unfortunate little people whose de- 
fects are deeply seated within their very being be- 
yond the present philosophy of/ man to understand 
Hence, it is seen at once how vital it is to all con- 
cerned that this distribution be made in the case of 
every backward child, and be made as early as pos- 
sible. Upon it depends all its future treatment and 



VARIETIES 25 

training. Without such a distinction teachers and 
parents may go on trying to teach their charges 
things impossible to learn and things positively hurt- 
ful, and at the same time rob them of the oppor- 
tunity to learn other things for which their capacities 
are suited and through which they would reach their 
highest attainments and most joyful service. On 
this point too much emphasis can not possibly be 
laid. I have seen a child brought apparently to the 
lowest stages of idiocy by the neglect of her par- 
ents who deemed it impossible to teach her because 
she was permanently retarded. Yet that same child, 
under medication and with skilful teaching, changed 
within a few years to a most polite, beautiful little 
lady, capable of rudimentary reading and writing 
and seemingly at that time destined to grow into 
full womanhood. On the other hand, I have seen 
a child driven by her mother into almost complete 
mental bankruptcy by attempting to force the poor 
benumbed mind to read and write and do arith- 
metic when such mysteries would be ever beyond the 
ken of this manually capable and housewifely little 
girl. In both cases the children suffered; one from 
neglect and the other from overstraining, and both 
from the same cause, namely, the lack of under- 
standing that differences, absolute and lifelong, exist 
among backward children. 

Further Study of Temporarily Retarded Chil- 
dren. — After we have made this basal and vital 
distinction between the two kinds of retarded chil- 



26 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

dren, we have still further sub-classifications to 
make. These finer divisions chiefly concern the 
teacher. They have arisen from the needs of the 
class-room, and therefore fit in very well with our 
purpose of classifying backward children by their 
future ability to support themselves in ordinary so- 
ciety. First, some of these children begin to improve 
immediately after the removal of their defects. For 
example, a retarded girl with a good personal history 
was found to be suffering with enlarged tonsils, poor 
eyes, and crooked and decayed teeth. Her eyes and 
tonsils were treated and almost immediately she 
showed improvement in other ways. Her appetite 
improved, she became less susceptible to colds, her 
teeth grew straighter; she was promoted at school 
and maintained her position in her class without 
further trouble. 

A boy nine years of age, after going to school 
three years, had reached only the second grade. He 
was good in some studies. He usually made eighty 
to ninety per cent, in spelling, but he could not sub- 
tract twenty-five from fifty, nor eighteen from 
twenty-five orally. He could say over words in 
the second reader, but did not seem to obtain any 
meaning from the process. His teachers stated 
that he was not interested in school work and was 
very careless about everything. Possibly there 
was some connection between his carelessness and 
his habit of rising at 5 a. m. to deliver papers, 
but his chief trouble lay in his defective vision. 



VARIETIES 27 

Twice in six months his eyes were examined and 
glasses fitted to them at a clinic. The improvement 
was immediate and continuous. In the same class 
with the same teacher, he changed entirely and ap- 
plied himself so well that he became a good scholar 
in all his studies, and in geography and history, his 
former bugbears, he secured grades of eighty-five 
and ninety-four per cent, respectively. He repre- 
sents the class of children very numerous in school 
whose backwardness is due to physical defects and 
who respond immediately to proper medical treat- 
ments. 

A similar case is a girl nine years of age, in the 
third grade, whose retardation was not marked 
enough to be noted in school but marked enough to 
attract the notice of her parents. It gave them some 
uneasiness because the child had suffered congestion 
of the brain when she was five and again when she 
was eight, and because they feared that her increas- 
ing backwardness was due to some mental derange- 
ment. 

An examination revealed no signs of mental ab- 
normalities, but it did reveal poor eyesight, enlarged 
tonsils, adenoids and a consequent sore throat. 
When the adenoids were removed and her eyes fitted 
with glasses, the child changed immediately for the 
better. Her health improved greatly. The signs 
of nervousness disappeared and with them her dis- 
position changed from melancholy to cheerfulness, 
from constant irritability to normal good humor, 



28 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

and her conduct from disobedience and rebellion 
to willing and happy effort to please. Her mental 
improvement was equally marked. Lessons that 
formerly were labored over with weariness, discour- 
agement and tears, now came easily. Her music les- 
sons, formerly an equal trial to her and her mother, 
became seasons of special enjoyment. So rapidly 
did she advance in music that she soon surpassed her 
mother in accomplishment. All of this change was 
due to the treatment and not to training. Her case 
illustrates what can be done by wise and watchful 
parents who look for causes of conduct and intelli- 
gently seek remedies at children's clinics before the 
advance of diseases causes trouble at school. 

Rapidly Recoverable Cases. — Jack, at eleven 
years, promised to be a ne'er-do-well. He could not 
learn in school. He was discouraged and his rela- 
tives were discouraged, too. He did not know what 
was the matter and nobody else seemed to know. 
He had floundered along for five years in the public 
school of his small town and was only in the second 
grade. He could not read in a second reader; his 
speUing was poor; his grammar was atrocious; his 
writing a combination of poor spelling, worse gram- 
mar and illegible penmanship. 

Yet he was a good boy, obedient, affectionate 
and thoughtful of others. He loved pets, and had a 
dog, some rabbits and chickens, all of which he 
cared for faithfully. He built them pens, and fussed 
and worked with them every spare hour he had. 



VARIETIES 29 

At eleven years of age he was brought to a clinic 
by his mother. They lived in a country town or he 
would have been brought before. There it was 
found he had enlarged tonsils, but his chief trouble 
was poor eyesight. His tonsils were removed and 
glasses were fitted to his eyes and he was entered in 
a special summer class in the city in which his physi- 
cal activities were given free opportunity. He was 
very good in gymnastic drills and in swimming. 
Carpentry also served to rouse his dormant facul- 
ties and to stimulate his interest in study. With his 
eyesight improved he found reading much easier 
and took to simple history. In six weeks he went 
back home, and in the fall entered the regular third 
grade, where his progress fully satisfied everybody. 
He went through the primary grades, and at sixteen, 
on account of the absence of his father from home, 
he took full charge of their small farm and ran it 
successfully. The proper diagnosis, treatment, and 
brief special training changed this boy from a tramp 
in embryo to a wholesome and worthy member of 
the community, capable in a pinch, of becoming the 
support of the family. 

Jack illustrates a second group among tempora- 
rily retarded children. Unlike the first group, they 
do not show immediate improvement on removal 
of their physical defects.'' They start to school, fall 
behind in their grades, are examined and found to 
have a number of physical defects, or to be badly 
situated in a poor neighborhood, or live in a poor 



30 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

home where they do not have enough to eat. When 
they are treated medically or surgically, or removed 
from their bad neighborhoods, or their homes, they 
then require manual training or individualized in- 
struction to arouse again their dormant and tem- 
porarily stagnated faculties. Such children improve 
and eventually return to their regular classes, grad- 
uate from school and go out into the world ready to 
make a living. 

The Slowly Recoverable. — ^Julia was a dis- 
couraging pupil. She was thirteen years old with 
six years of schooling to her credit, during which 
many and sundry teachers had wrought upon her 
to see Avhat they might make of her meager mind. 
Four years she had submitted meekly to regular 
grade instruction, learning a little at first and then 
losing that little gradually until she went into a spe- 
cial class. For two years individual instruction, 
with all the accessories of equipment and manual 
work, were brought to bear upon her with practi- 
cally no results. Then she was taken to a clinic for 
diagnosis, where a number of complications were 
discovered. 

The girl was very small for her age, a pale 
anemic child, with bad teeth, poor eyesight, enlarged 
adenoids and tonsils. She was dull and sleepy, sub- 
ject to spells of stubbornness, heart-breaking to an 
ambitious teacher, but otherwise of an excellent 
moral character. Glasses were fitted to her eyes, 
her teeth were treated, and her nervous and intes- 



VARIETIES 31 

tinal troubles received the proper medication. Then 
she went back to the special class. 

Now the two chief values of all special classes are 
found in the large amount of attention given to each 
pupil in the small classes and in fitting the instruc- 
tion to the peculiar needs of each pupil. Julia liked 
to sew, to take physical exercise, to play games and 
to sing. So she received regular daily training in 
all these arts. Nothing special or peculiar was in- 
troduced into the methods of teaching her these 
common accomplishments. It was the fact that she 
was learning the things she could learn that counted. 
The effect of such exercises began soon to appear. 
They showed first in her constantly and rapidly im- 
proving physical condition. Health came to her 
body, blood to her cheeks, brightness to her eyes, 
and energy to her muscles. Along with health came 
improvement in her disposition. Her stubbornness 
just evaporated under the sunshine of daily well- 
being. 

Finally her power to perform mental work began 
to grow. Concentration, always dependent upon 
physical power in some form or other, increased 
with the increase of health and strength. Julia be- 
gan to learn, and the joy of developing common to 
all children when they grow came to her. Four 
months of strenuous training were required to stem 
the tide of retrogression and to return her to the 
regular third grade. That of course was far below 
her normal grade and it will take several years of 



32 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

hard work yet to bring her up anywhere near to the 
standard. It seems a profound pity that so many 
years were wasted before a dinic examination was 
made, but we must remember that it was the dinic 
that started her right and assured her teachers of 
ultimate victory. 

JuHa, unHke some of the boys and girls just de- 
scribed, belongs to a class of slowly recoverable 
temporarily retarded children. They are by all odds 
the most difficult cases to diagnose and to train. In 
their general appearance and mental powers they 
seem to belong not to the temporarily retarded but 
to the permanently retarded, for whom little can be 
done. They often suffer from a multitude of de- 
fects — poor vision, bad hearing, enlarged tonsils, 
adenoids, decayed teeth and malnutrition; they tire 
easily, are irritable or apathetic, without ability to 
pay attention, idlers, slovenly, falling into mischief, 
centers of disturbance and constant drains upon the 
teacher's time and patience. All of their physical 
defects may be remedied, they may be placed in the 
best of special classes and yet for a long time their 
mental awakening is beyond the hope of all but the 
most faithful and experienced. Gradually they take 
hold; some detail of manual labor appeals to them 
and they do it with a new pleasure. From that, 
step by step, the experienced teacher leads them out 
into wider and more intricate pieces of manual work 
until at last the day comes when the gulf between 
the concrete task and the abstract symbol, between 



VARIETIES 33 

training and teaching, is bridged and the road to the 
higher learning Hes open once more. The progress 
may still be slow, but the upward march is sure, and 
the outcome, though possibly long delayed, is cer- 
tain. No single group of children requires so much 
patience, so much skill in diagnosis and training, 
and so much abounding faith in the infallibility of 
psychological analyses as does this group. If to 
their mental backwardness are added moral delin- 
quencies, then indeed is their lot a hard one. For 
it is so easy for the uninformed parent or unpre- 
pared teacher to explain the whole trouble by say- 
ing, "He is just bad ; that's what is the matter with 
him," but utterly forgetting that in this case the 
badness is not at all a cause, but merely a symptom, 
or a concomitant, of the backwardness. 

These children are often confused with the feeble- 
minded, and hence in some cases great cures of the 
feeble-minded are heralded by instructors who are 
not skilful in making diagnoses. This is not to 
be wondered at since the physical appearances and 
mental attributes of these children very closely ap- 
proximate those of the truly feeble-minded. The 
resemblances are only superficial, while the differ- 
ences are profound. It is in this realm that so much 
waste of energy and so much confusion in theory 
is to be found. Teachers will insist that middle- 
grade imbeciles, for example, can be taught to read 
and write, because they have received children diag- 
nosed as middle-grade imbeciles into their classes 



34 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

and have succeeded in teaching them to read and 
write. It is perfectly evident to those who under- 
stand that if, by definition, a middle-grade imbecile 
is one who can not be taught to read and write, then 
children called middle-grade imbeciles and who still 
learn to read and write are not what they are diag- 
nosed to be. That mistakes of this kind should 
frequently occur is not at all surprising when we 
consider how few skilled mental diagnosticians there 
are and how many mental diagnoses are made by 
laymen and by others with very little special train- 
ing. It is, therefore, highly necessary that the 
teacher of special children should keep herself clear 
from confusion of this sort. She should maintain 
her poise of mind and retain her clear discrimina- 
tion between temporarily retarded and the perma- 
nently retarded and neither waste her time by spend- 
ing useless energy on the latter nor exhibit undue 
exhilaration over the reclamation of the former. 
Especially must she be on her guard against assert- 
ing that a feeble-minded child, who very naturally 
makes exceedingly rapid progress after surgical and 
medical treatment, with a little intensive training, is 
not feeble-minded, but only temporarily backward. 
Just recently in an institution I came across a girl 
manifestly feeble-minded, who six or seven years 
ago under the care of an expert, received the 
proper medical and surgical treatment, and then was 
placed with a special teacher. Under this tutelage 
the girl progressed very rapidly. She seemed to 



VARIETIES 35 

awaken to new life intellectually and emotionally. 
Her physical condition, her disposition, her charac- 
ter and her conduct all leaped forward in unison. 
She soon entered a grade in a regular public school 
where, though she was much retarded pedagogically, 
she kept pace with her class and made good prog- 
ress. Gradually, however, her first rapid strides 
grew slower and shorter until finally she reached 
her upper limit of intellectual growth and has re- 
mained there stationary ever since. Several ob- 
servers were deceived by her first remarkable ad- 
vancement and prematurely concluded that she was 
entirely normal. 



CHAPTER III 

TYPICAL RETARDATION DUE TO PHYSICAL DEFECTS 

A SPECIAL-CLASS teacher of long experience 
was one day confronted with the worst case 
she had ever seen. lie was a boy of eleven years 
whose parents had recently moved into the neigh- 
borhood and had entered their son in the regular 
grade, where the teacher had tried her best with 
him, and had finally appealed to the principal to re- 
lieve her of this hopeless case by placing him in the 
special class for backward children. So the princi- 
pal brought him to the special teacher and gave her 
as much as he knew of the boy's family, personal 
and pedagogical history. 

The parents were ordinary hard-working people 
of good stock ; his brothers and sisters were all nor- 
mal and several were in school doing well. The 
boy himself had never suffered with any specially 
severe disease like diphtheria, nor any that left bad 
mental consequences behind, nor did he suffer from 
epileptic fits, St. Vitus' dance, nor nervousness, 
though he had a few more than his share of 
children's ordinary diseases like measles, mumps, 
chicken-pox and the like, and continually suffered 

36 



PHYSICAL DEFECTS 37 

from colds, sore throat, toothache and occasionally 
earache. 

His school-life presented nothing very marked in 
particular, though on the whole it was bad. He 
started to school at six ; at first made good progress, 
but contracted the measles and was out of school 
for six weeks, and after that seemed to lose interest 
and to fall behind until he was only in the third 
grade, and was that far along more by grace than 
by merit. He seemed to be generally and hopelessly 
retarded. He was poor in everything. Apparently 
he did not try ; he was dull, stupid, inattentive, for- 
getful, irritable, stubborn, irregular in his attend- 
ance, annoying when he was in school, and latterly 
suspected of truancy when he was out. In it all, he 
did not seem to be particularly mentally defective; 
some of his teachers asserted he was feeble-minded, 
while others said he could learn if he would. Such 
was his history when he came to the special teacher. 

Diagnosis of the Case.— As I said, this teacher 
had both training for and experience in her work. 
Though this boy seemed a hopeless case, she pro- 
ceeded in her usual systematic and efficient man- 
ner. She wasted no time calling him names nor 
labeling him. She did not stop to ask if he was 
"really retarded." That he was pedagogically re- 
tarded was a patent fact. Her business was ulti- 
mately to restore him to the grades if that was pos- 
sible. Her immediate task was to decide if that was 
possible. To decide that she must find the causes of 



38 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

this boy's backwardness. Her experience assured 
her the causes were either in the boy himself or in 
his environment. 

Environmental Causes. — In his environment 
there was nothing unusually bad. His home was 
not rich, but it was a good one. His brothers and 
sisters were normal. His schooling had been the 
usual one, and his brothers and sisters had suc- 
ceeded with the same schools, lessons and teachers 
he himself had had. The neighborhood in which he 
lived and played was typical, neither very good nor 
very bad. His companions were not noted for their 
delinquencies, though he had in the last year fallen 
in with a crowd of boys who formed the worst ele- 
ment of the school and who numbered among 
them some of the truants and incorrigibles. But, 
on the whole, it seemed clear that the cause of this 
boy's decline in school work was not due to environ- 
ment, but to something in him. Was that something 
a mental defect, as a number of his teachers said, 
or a physical defect? 

The Physical Examination. — For answer the 
teacher turned to the boy himself. He had come 
slouching in behind the principal and had stood fin- 
gering his cap and casting furtive glances around 
the room and over the other fifteen children of vari- 
ous ages in the ungraded class, while the principal 
gave the teacher a rapid account of her new charge's 
life and present condition. When the principal left, 
in answer to the teacher's word, Joe — we will call 



PHYSICAL DEFECTS 39 

him, though that is not his name — shuffled up to 
the desk and stood before her. No wonder others 
thought him hopeless. Almost every line of his per- 
sonal appearance and posture spoke loudly of physi- 
cal and mental inefficiency. To the acute eyes of 
the teacher his clothing manifested the struggle go- 
ing on between a mother, neat and energetic, still 
hoping to keep up a high standard of appearance, 
and the slow but sure inroads of mental retrogres- 
sion in the boy. His clothes were good, somewhat 
worn, carelessly put on and slovenly carried on 
a slouching frame. Great perpendicular wrinkles 
creased his coat at the shoulders; his soft shirt col- 
lar, though clean and white, was pulled out of shape, 
with one wing over and the other under his coat 
lapel; his four-in-hand necktie had slipped down 
from his collar and the ends hung outside his vest; 
his stockings were not pulled up smoothly ; his shoe- 
strings were only partly laced. The struggle be- 
tween a mother's will and a backward boy's listless 
indifference was patent everywhere in his clothes. 

The whole effect was accentuated and heightened 
by his posture. He stood with his arms hanging at 
his sides, stoop-shouldered, flat-chested, his shoul- 
der-blades outstanding, betraying in every attitude 
he took the lassitude and weakness due to lack of 
oxygen, to faults of digestion and assimilation, and 
to the poisons of fatigue. The teacher's trained eye 
went over him from head to foot, noting in detail 
every characteristic, eliminating the unimportant 



40 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

and non-essential, marking down in her retentive 
memory the vital essentials, and letting these tell 
their story to her unbiased and disciplined judg- 
ment. 

Her survey began with his hair, naturally thick 
and glossy, but now dead and unruly, showing evi- 
dences of having been wetted and combed that morn- 
ing, but later mussed by a careless adjustment of 
the cap, which the embarrassed boy now swung 
backward and forward in nervous little semicircles. 
The shape of his head, the size and shape of his ears, 
eyes, nose, mouth and jaws were all naturally nor- 
mal, as the teacher could discern by her analysis, 
though some features were marred by defects. The 
sallow complexion, the drooping eyelids, the vacu- 
ous expression of face, and the listlessness of every 
movement betokened either imbecility or the total 
result of many advanced physical defects. 

Signs of Adenoids. — To decide whether Joe 
was permanently or only temporarily retarded, Miss 
F., the teacher, knew that his physical defects must 
first be diagnosed and removed and a chance be 
given for his native powers to appear and to be de- 
veloped by proper training in a special class. To 
begin the analysis of Joe's real condition by her own 
observation, Miss F. made a few gentle and kindly 
inquiries, placed him in a seat well up in front, and 
gave him some simple busy-work which would take 
his mind off of himself and yet not make so great a 
demand upon his attention that his activity would 



PHYSICAL DEFECTS 41 

obscure his real self-expression. In the meantime 
Miss F. continued her careful and systematic exam- 
ination, while Joe, blissfully ignorant of it, pro- 
ceeded to adjust himself to his new surroundings. 
Very quickly the teacher noted the most potent 
adenoid signs. Experience taught her what trains 
of evil effects to expect in addition to these patent 
defects. 

Because adenoids are so common, because they 
are so intimately connected with retardation, be- 
cause their mental effects so closely resemble feeble- 
mindedness, and because their accompanying physi- 
cal defects are so numerous, we will describe briefly 
what Miss F. saw in them. So true is the last state- 
ment that we can almost say that a study of ade- 
noids and their symptoms will cover nearly all 
the non-contagious, most common physical defects a 
child-trainer will ordinarily be called on to discover. 

Adenoids are really tonsils always normally pres- 
ent and giving trouble only when they swell by over- 
growth and hang down from the rear wall of the 
passage between the throat and the nose, forming 
lobes of pulpy, red, spongy masses like several rai- 
sins on a stem, the whole about as large as the end 
of an adult's finger. In that position they obstruct 
breathing, compelling the sufferer to bring in his 
supply of oxygen directly through the mouth instead 
of by the radiator-like, dust-gathering passages of 
the nostrils, where the air is warmed and cleansed. 
3?he first external signs of adenoids to be looked for 



42 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

by the teacher, though of course others may precede 
this one, is the thickening of the bridge of the nose 
without depression. The bony bridge simply widens 
by sweHing at each side and gradually joins the 
cheek like a hill melting into a plain. The nostrils, 
because of their disuse in breathing, do not develop, 
remain narrow and small, lose their fine chiselings, 
and take on an infantile, putty-like, unfinished ap- 
pearance. If the whole nose is inspected sharply, it 
appears as if the bridge and the nostrils did not 
match, as if the bridge was several years older than 
the nostrils. 

Very quickly following this thickening of the 
nose bridge comes the mouth breathing. It may be 
harder to detect than one thinks. Children are 
scolded so frequently for holding their mouths open 
that some of them acquire the habit of snapping 
their lips shut whenever they look at any one in 
authority or a grown person looks their way. As a 
result the mouth appears to be closed most of the 
time and the weary-worn, labor-saving device, *Tt 
is just a habit !" stops further parental endeavor and 
throws the burden of the matter on the already 
overburdened frame of the patient sufferer, a pa- 
tient and a sufferer in more senses than one. The 
sympathetic observer will secretly watch the child 
when he — she, I was just going to say, because girls 
more than boys suffer from all forms of suppres- 
sion — when he is off guard. The best time is dur- 
ing the child's sleep. Parents, however, are so loath 



PHYSICAL DEFECTS 43 

to admit that anything is wrong with their own 
children and usually feel so much of a repugnance, 
not to say fear, of an operation that unfortunately 
their witness fails where it is needed most. How- 
ever, the matter can not be long in doubt with any- 
thing like observation, and at any time the diagnosis 
of a modern throat specialist will settle the matter. 
He will use a small mirror and a light to look up 
into the arch of the post-nasal cavity or explore it 
with his finger. The first method the lay person is 
almost always unable to use, and the second, for 
reasons many and obvious, he is wholesomely ad- 
vised not to try. 

The open mouth of the adenoid case is not due at 
first to a dropping of the lower jaw, but a shorten- 
ing of the upper lip. The fashion plates of school 
misses, or the stereotyped faces of feminine beau- 
ties found everywhere to illustrate the traditional 
fragile and clinging type of woman, offer the best 
opportunties to study the ideal adenoid upper lip. 
For some reason, possibly because of the "weaker 
sex" theory, the world has forced to some extent 
the adenoid face and almost wholly the adenoid up- 
per lip upon the womanly woman, and the firm 
normal upper lip upon her anti-type, the "strong" 
woman. All such perversions of nature showered 
upon us in daily arts of advertisements and illus- 
trations tend to confuse our minds and obscure the 
defects from which children suffer. Though the 
upper lip is first affected, it is not long before the 



44 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

lower lip also suffers. It thickens, tends to roll out 
and down, falling with the lower jaw. The lip 
thus exposed to the air, and deteriorating with the 
rest of the body, becomes chapped and cracks, often 
being covered with seams which open and bleed 
easily. Usually it takes a long time after the ade- 
noids are removed for the lips to recover their nor- 
mal shape and beauty. 

Adenoids, enlarged tonsils and crooked teeth fol- 
low one another almost with the fatality of cause 
and effect. The connection is certain if the ade- 
noids develop at or before the time of second teeth- 
ing, at about seven 3^ears of age. This is due to the 
peculiar effect adenoids have upon the shape of the 
jaws. The upper jaw assumes a V-shaped appear- 
ance, losing its curve and tending to a point in front. 
Some writers believe it is a reversion to the animal 
jaw it so closely resembles, others, that it is chiefly 
due to the pressure of enlarged tonsils. Naturally 
such a malformation crowds the teeth together and 
out of line. The tipper front incisors jamb together 
and overlap ; then the canines, or eye teeth, come in 
either inside or outside of their proper places and 
form "tushes" ; the other teeth adjust themselves 
to their crowded quarters as best they can, and often 
the jawbones are bent up or down so that either the 
front teeth or the back will not come together at all. 

Under such conditions chewing is agony at worst 
and ill-paying labor at best. Bolting the food gives 
immediate relief and future digestive retribution, 



PHYSICAL DEFECTS 45 

neither of which, with all the parental admonitions 
and threats thrown in, will be efficacious until the 
child's teeth are restored by a dentist to their proper 
grinding positions. Unless some positive treatment 
for straightening the teeth is given, the crooked 
teeth and consequent deformed and ugly mouth will 
accompany the sufferer through life. Crooked teeth 
are not misfortunes of fate, but curable defects, and 
ninety-five per cent, of them are due to adenoids. 

Still the category of ills justly ascribed to ad- 
enoids is not complete. They rob the body of its 
most necessary nutrition, food and oxygen. How 
the food is lost by insufficient chewing due to bad 
teeth has been described above. Robbing of oxygen 
seems at first sight a false charge. For is it not 
easier to breathe through the mouth than through 
the nose? Why then is not more instead of less air 
taken in that way? First, because the organism 
seeks to protect itself against the direct blast of in- 
coming cold and dusty air striking directly upon the 
irritated membrane of the adenoid throat. Sec- 
ondly, because of the ease of intake and the reduc- 
tion of the amount of air, the neck muscles and the 
inter-rib muscles are not exercised ; the ribs sag, the 
chest flattens, the shoulders droop forward, and the 
shoulder-blades stand out with remarkable promi- 
nence. This whole condition is furthered and height- 
ened by the lassitude and weakness of the body due 
to lack of oxygen, to faults of digestion and assimi- 
lation, and to fatigue. The sallow complexion, the 



46 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

paleness about the lips, the dark furrows under the 
eyes, and the drooping eyehds, with a weary expres- 
sion of face and Hstlessness in every movement, ex- 
cept when quick irritation overcomes the constant 
disincHnation to move, complete the picture of a 
:well advanced adenoid case. 

Mental Signs of Adenoids. — The mental signs 
of adenoids are almost as well marked as the physi- 
cal ones just described. Irritability is the one first 
noticed. It is almost impossible for the sufferer to 
get up in the morning, dress, eat breakfast and get 
started to school without a quarrel and a cry over 
something. Ignorant parents attribute such out- 
breaks to mere temper and frequently assist in the 
destruction of the child's disposition and nervous 
system by means of the ever-ready rod. There is 
no mystical connection between adenoids and irrita- 
bility. Let any one push a wad of cotton about the 
size of the little finger end back through his nose so 
it will lodge in the cavity and obstruct his breath- 
ing. Of course, it will compel him to breathe 
through his mouth. His mouth and throat will be- 
come parched, his sleep will be uneasy and broken ; 
all the neighboring membranes will become irritated, 
and in the morning, just as worn-out nature com- 
poses itself for some real sleep, he is called to an 
arbitrary task and expected to arise immediately, 
obediently, amiably and gladly, greeting all the 
household with a happy "Good morning!" Such 
expectations are against nature. The same explana- 



PHYSICAL DEFECTS 47 

tion applies to wandering and flighty attention, the 
second marked symptom of adenoids. The constant 
irritation grown so habitual to the child as to be 
almost unnoticed by him under ordinary circum- 
stances, comes up into clear consciousness as soon 
as he tries to apply his mind to monotonous books. 
Everybody has noticed the same phenomenon with 
any slight irritant. Excitement drowns out a pain. 
But who can study with a pair of tight new shoes 
burning his feet? If adenoids are allowed to re- 
main, other more general mental effects follow the 
gradual decline of physical strength: a general 
mental lassitude, inability to apply the mind, dull- 
ness and such low mental power that adenoid cases 
of advanced standing are often mistaken for imbe- 
cility. It is in this very realm that the most strik- 
ing cases of recovery from retardation are recorded. 
Tests By Reading. — Miss F. finally had Joe 
read for her. She gave him a book as easy as the 
first reader and let him handle it in his own way. 
To free him from embarrassment as much as possi- 
ble she let him sit in his seat. He seized the book 
with both hands, tightened up all the muscles of his 
body, began in a high-pitched, falsetto key, with a 
peculiar deadened tone in it which his teacher recog- 
nized at once as the "adenoid voice." When he 
came to a word that he did not quite know, Joe 
screwed up his face, squinted his right eye and 
swung his head around so that his left eye did all 
the seeing. His pronunciation exhibited minor yet 



48 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

significant peculiarities. He constantly omitted the 
"g" in words ending in "ing" ; he slurred many- 
other sounds and often omitted entirely a final syl- 
lable with perfect equanimity and entire irresponsi- 
bility. Not once did the new teacher stop him, nor 
advise him nor correct him. 

Joe was elated ; so was the teacher. She was sure 
now that he had adenoids, almost certain that his 
tonsils were enlarged, suspected that he was par- 
tially deaf, and felt adequately convinced that he 
was near-sighted and that his right eye was far more 
affected than his left. The position of his book, 
the twisting of his head, shutting one eye in difficult 
places, the wrinkles above his eyes across his fore- 
head, all these told her of eye strain and argued for 
many other nervous stresses all over his body that 
may have led to many, many of his unruly fits and 
bad actions. His slurring of syllables without any 
consciousness of it, together with the adenoids, ar- 
gued for partial deafness, and these were seconded 
by his peculiarly loud voice. None of these signs 
alone would have meant much, but altogether their 
cumulative evidence was almost irresistible. His 
teacher was not surprised a moment later, when, 
without even touching the boy, she faced him to a 
window, asked him to open his mouth wide and 
pronounce "a" short, as in "rat," while she looked 
into his open mouth and saw the red masses on each 
side of his throat. Now she was certain of the en- 
larged tonsils, and also as sure of them as if she 



PHYSICAL DEFECTS 49 

could see the enlarged adenoids hanging in the post- 
nasal passage in such a way as to obstruct most ef- 
fectually any breathing through the nasal passage 
provided by nature to warm and strain the incoming 
air. A few simple additional tests would make her 
also morally certain of the eye and ear defects and 
give her the assurance that she could refer this poor 
boy to the medical inspector without any fear that 
her tentative diagnosis would prove an exaggerated 
and unsupported suspicion. 

To give the eye tests she simply held up letters 
printed in different sized types at certain distances 
from the boy's eyes, distances that she had marked 
off on the floor by making tests upon normal chil- 
dren. She tried first one eye and then the other. 
While her tests were not at all final or official they 
were accurate enough to convince her that Joe 
needed an oculist. The ear tests were equally sim- 
ple. She stood Joe up against the wall with his 
right ear to the wall, his finger in it and his eyes 
shut, and then had him repeat words to her that 
she whispered to him while she stood at specified 
distances from him. These distances she knew by 
former tests. Just to confirm her judgment and to 
intefest this backward boy — who was receiving, by 
the way, a great deal of real education from the 
tests — she had him stand before her with his back 
to her, close his eyes, and then listen for a watch 
which she held concealed in one hand, while she 
brought both her closed hands from a distance on 



50 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

each side of his head toward his ears. As soon as 
he was sure he heard the watch he raised the hand 
on the side that he heard it. As she suspected, he 
was almost entirely deaf in one ear and his hearing 
was much diminished in the other. It was a revela- 
tion to Joe and a matter of keen interest to the other 
children, though, of course, none of them knew all 
the results or their entire significance. None of them 
guessed, for instance, what the teacher knew was 
true, that much of Joe's stubbornness, stupidity, tru- 
ancy and pseudo-feeble-mindedness was already ex- 
plained. Though he did look hopeless, though ad- 
enoids choked his breathing passages, and tonsils 
nearly filled his throat, though both had been instru- 
mental in bringing on the earache and partial deaf- 
ness, and had further warped his jaws out of shape ; 
though his teeth were decaying and tartarous; 
though he was bereft of his vitality by this under- 
nutrition and by lack of oxygen because of aden- 
oids; though his eyes were poor, and altogether he 
seemed a sorry object, still there was hope. Great 
indeed was the faith that could see a future for this 
boy, his mouth open, his teeth crooked and decay- 
ing, his jaws malformed, his nose thickened at the 
bridge and undeveloped at the nostrils, his eyes 
heavy, his hearing impaired, colds and sore throats 
his weekly lot, his body starving for air and food 
and proper rest in sleep, his attention flighty, his 
mind sluggish, his temper quick and easily irritated, 
his disposition stubborn and rebellious, a child unfit 



PHYSICAL DEFECTS 51 

in every respect for schooling or for work, for play 
or companionship, a ready victim to many diseases 
and susceptible to bronchitis, pneumonia, and tuber- 
culosis, and yet all his troubles physical and mental, 
with the exception of a few like his visual defects, 
could be traced directly or indirectly to adenoids. 
He, indeed, was an extreme case, but how many 
other backward children are there that suffer little 
and much from a few or many of the same physical 
defects. 

Joe's Treatment. — Miss F. knew that it was 
useless to waste time giving Joe mental tests or try- 
ing to proceed with his education while all the ave- 
nues to his mind were blockaded effectually against 
any admission of knowledge. She sent him to the 
medical inspector of the school, who confirmed all 
her tentative diagnoses, and referred the boy to spe- 
cialists and clinics for treatment. Of course Joe's 
parents were amazed at the condition of their boy. 
They were plain people who had not found aden- 
oids and enlarged tonsils in their spellers and read- 
ers when they went to school and were inclined, 
like most parents who are moved through fear and 
prejudice, to charge all advice regarding surgical 
operations to attempts at experimentation upon their 
most precious son. But tact and coaxing by the 
medical inspector, the special teacher and the school 
nurse, finally won the day, and Joe's mother went 
with him to the hospital for the throat operation. 
It was a trying time for the poor woman and a posi- 



52 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

tive epoch in Joe's life. He went bravely enough, 
with a mixture of weariness and fear and stoicism 
that did not sit badly upon him. When at last he 
was undressed and stretched upon the wheeled 
couch and felt the cone for the ether slipped over 
his mouth and nose, he almost rebelled, but made a 
great effort — and knew nothing more for some min- 
utes. The doctor opened his mouth, slipped a 
curved knife back behind the* soft-palate and with 
one sweep removed the adenoids forever. The ton- 
sils followed next, both with a great show of blood, 
and Joe came out of the operating room still asleep. 
He revived in a few more minutes, and felt first of 
all the new freedom of a clear breathing passage 
and an unclogged throat. For a week or more his 
throat was sore, of course, but that he endured with 
great fortitude because of new-found pride in being 
looked up to by other boys who had never been for- 
tunate enough to have adenoids and tonsils and to 
go into a real hospital for terrible operations ! 
Then there was the tenderness of his mother and his 
brothers and sisters and the new grave solicitude 
of his father, and above all the real addition to his 
moral strength which had come from nobly going 
through the ordeal and making that final, never-to- 
be-forgotten decision to stand it all when the ether- 
izing began. 

The eye examinations were not at all bad. The 
"drops" made it impossible for him to see things 
near by, but they did not hurt. His new glasses 



PHYSICAL DEFECTS 53 

were strange at first and he had one or two ac- 
cidents with them in spite of the admonitions of 
his mother and the family worry over the cost of 
repairs. The ear trouble and the catarrh of the 
nose and throat were the most stubborn and de- 
manded the longest and most patient treatments. 
But Joe and his mother, inspired by the confidence 
of Miss F., kept up the work and became familiar 
with clinics and specialists and inured to waiting in 
anterooms where the afflicted of the world gather 
daily. The dentists were Joe's worst enemies. At 
their hands he suffered many and sundry tortures. 
Somehow there was not the same glory in submit- 
ting to the irritation of getting a tooth filled as there 
was to going out into the dark unknown by ether, 
and Joe's protestations were inversely proportion- 
ate to the decrease in glory. But at last it was over ; 
the hopeless teeth were drawn, the others were 
filled, and a band, with little screws at the back, was 
clamped tightly upon his upper teeth to bring them 
slowly and as painlessly as possible back to their 
normal shape. 

It was March when Joe came to the special class, 
and it was the latter part of May before his clinic 
treatments were finished and he was released from 
almost daily physical pain and permitted to continue 
his treatments for ear and catarrh at home, with 
occasional visits to the doctors. In the meantime 
he had kept up a broken attendance at school, being 
excused when necessary for his treatments. His 



54 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

lessons were irregular and his education but per- 
functory during that time. Yet it was wonderful 
to see how he was already learning. It seemed as 
if many items of knowledge that had been so la- 
boriously instilled into his mind and seemingly for- 
ever submerged there came back again. He was 
changed physically also. There was a new bright- 
ness in his eye, a better color to his cheek, a firmer 
position and finer carriage to his body, a better appe- 
tite and more visible results from his food. His 
mouth was still open and he was far from the boy 
he should have been, for ills that gather through 
years can not be dispelled in weeks. His new-found 
strength of muscle and purpose was exercised 
chiefly in the manual and physical work of the spe- 
cial class, where he was not only acquiring skill, but 
was also developing interest in both manual and 
mental tasks by discovering hitherto unknown con- 
nections between the things he learned in books and 
the things he liked to do with his hands. Almost 
before Joe knew it June had come and with it vaca- 
tion, the great period of relief to him before, but 
this year another momentous occasion in this year 
of great experiences. 

Joe's Constitutional Treatments. — Through 
the never-failing kindness of Miss F., Joe's mother 
was recommended to a society and Joe was sent to 
the country for the summer in care of a fresh air 
organization. How he spent that summer it would 
take volumes to tell if everything he did and learned 



PHYSICAL DEFECTS 55 

were put down. It was the first time in his life he 
had ever been so long in the country. The farm 
where he stayed was a real farm, with a barn, stable, 
horses, cows, barnyard, fowls of all kinds, and two 
puppies just at the playful age, with a pond near by 
for the boys, who like himself were there for the 
summer, to swim in; with plenty of good nourishing 
country food to eat, without the constant temptation 
to devour candies and ice-cream and to drink soda- 
water. Indeed, the old burning in Joe's throat that, 
combined with his under-nourished body, brought 
on that awful and continual craving for freezing 
mixtures, or cigarette narcotics, was gone, and in 
its place came a regular, robust appetite that made 
a slice of bread, golden-crowned with fresh country 
butter, look like the most delicious treat that ever 
made a boy's mouth water in expectation. Back of 
all this happy vacation life was a system, but of 
course Joe did not know it. He did not dream that 
his treatment was constitutional and that the five 
necessities of his daily life — food, air, sleep, water 
and play — were all carefully regulated, albeit with 
such masterly care that the regulative devices were 
all out of sight. 

In the fall when Joe came back to school he was 
wonderfully changed. His schoolmates hardly 
knew him, and even Miss F., who had hoped mar- 
vels for him, was surprised. He was a healthy, 
round-cheeked, brown-skinned young savage, as 
happy and enthusiastic as a boy could be who was 



56 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

tasting that most exhilarating of all experiences, 
the rapid return of a naturally good constitution to 
health and strength after a long down-hill journey. 
He was not yet perfect. The marks of his adenoids 
were still upon him. His teeth, slowly returning to 
normal position, were white and clean. Toothache 
and earache both were things of the past. He had 
not known a cold since spring airs came. His shoul- 
ders were somewhat stooped, but his lips were 
closed, and it was a positive delight to his teacher 
to look at the strong mouth, with its curve return- 
ing, taking the place of that former unsightly gap 
in his face. His nose, too, was reshaping itself un- 
der the exercise of breathing. He still wore his 
glasses, and behind them his eyes glowed with new 
interests and new meaning. His body showed the 
greatest improvement. He had gained in weight 
and in muscular vigor; his nervousness had almost 
disappeared and in its place had come a poise that 
spoke of self-control and energy ready and anxious 
to take up and complete the tasks of a boy's life. 
With it all his temper had changed. He was not 
sullen, but willing ; not stubborn, but docile ; not stu- 
pid, but eager to learn. 

The remnants of his defects, especially his de- 
creasing deafness and his eye defects, kept him for 
a little time in the special class. There he rounded 
out his deficiencies rapidly, learned quickly to spell 
and to read and to do arithmetic sufficiently to re- 
turn to his grade, entering the fourth grade at the 



PHYSICAL DEFECTS 57 

en3 of the first half-year. His school progress from 
that time on was very good. He not only kept up, 
but made some advance, and though he finished the 
eighth grade one year behind the usual age, he went 
out into the world well equipped with a strong body 
and a good mind, and since that time has done well 
in a printing ofiice, where his father secured him a 
position. Without doubt he will rise to a self-sup- 
porting and worthy man, and possibly he will be 
heard from in the world. Miss F. still points to him 
as one of her most hopeless appearing cases and one 
of her most successful reclamations. Whenever 
she gets discouraged with her special class she thinks 
of Joe and takes heart again. 



CHAPTER IV 

MINDS IN STRAIGHT JACKETS 

BACKWARD children do not present one type 
of mind, but many types. They do not neces- 
sarily think slowly, but sometimes think with spark- 
ling rapidity. Their minds do not always develop 
slowly, but sometimes leap from stage to stage with 
wonderful strides. They are not always dull or 
stupid, but break out in unexpected flashes of wit. 
They are genuises in some things, fools in others. 
They are good and bad, cheerful and morose, 
excitable and apathetic, a medley of emotions, a tur- 
moil of thoughts, an anarchy of actions. Their 
variety of types among the temporarily retarded 
escapes analysis, breaks through hard and fast class- 
ifications, defies rules and regulations, overturns me- 
chanical systems of instruction, falsifies predictions 
of their development, humiliates prophets, and, best 
of all, banishes hopelessness regarding the outcome 
of any one of their lives. A few examples are given 
in this chapter to illustrate the attitude to be taken 
toward some of the commoner types. Because back- 
wardness usually means slowness, the first is the 
story of a slow boy, an impatient teacher and an in- 

58 



MINDS IN STRAIGHT JACKETS 59 

terlocked course of study which demanded the same 
toll from every child who traveled that way. 

The Slow Pupil. — Karl was a boy in a country 
school. He was slow in everything. He was lag- 
ging in his movements, dragging in his speech, delib- 
erate in his thought processes, and interminable in 
acquiring new ideas. Yet his work was good when 
it was completed. Given a problem to work out, 
and left to himself, he would usually get it, and 
when he got it it was almost always correct. In 
arithmetic, therefore, he did not suffer so much. In 
oral work like reading, spelling, parsing and analyz- 
ing sentences in class, in reciting of every kind, he 
was wearisome. Examinations were written, so 
though he hardly ever finished on time he was just 
able to get through, because what he answered was 
about correct. Unfortunately for Karl he had a 
teacher who was a high-strung woman, who be- 
lieved that good scholarship meant speed, and that 
heaven and earth might pass away, but every jot and 
tittle of the text-book must be fulfilled in the allotted 
time. Furthermore, he was unfortunate in having 
this same teacher for practically his entire school 
life. She did not spare him. She let him know, 
and the whole school and the whole neighborhood 
know, that Karl was a stupid, dull-witted fellow, 
with no brains and no prospect of ever acquiring 
any. The frequency with which she said It, the way 
she said it, and the conviction that she produced in 
the minds of other pupils about it would have ut- 



60 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

terly discouraged any other person differently con- 
stituted. But Karl, slow as the proverbial tortoise, 
also had the fine qualities of that humble animal. 
He held on, plodded through the grades with imper- 
turbable patience, just squeezing through examina- 
tions, accompanied by the pity of his schoolmates, 
the disappointment of his parents and the increas- 
ing exasperation of his teacher, and finally left 
school followed by a sigh of relief in lieu of the 
usual congratulations. 

He entered a machine shop in a neighboring city, 
and started at the same time to learn mechanical 
drawing at night. He was still slow, but it was in 
a business where accuracy counted for more than 
careless speed, where a mistake might cost thou- 
sands of dollars, and where absolute reliability, 
coupled with unconquerable tenacity, was sure to 
overcome obstacles and make success. Karl had the 
qualities. In both shop work and mechanical draw- 
ing he forged surely ahead. His drawing plates 
were models of neatness and exactness. His initial 
impetus to self-confidence came in his winning the 
medal in the night school class for the best drawing 
of the season. He learned his trade, gradually grav- 
itated to the tool room where the dies for stamping 
metal were made, distinguished himself for his fine 
workmanship there, applied his mind to improving 
the methods of making dies and to shortening me- 
chanical processes by means of them, and at thirty- 
five was at the head of that branch of work in his 



MINDS IN STRAIGHT JACKETS 61 

city, already an inventor of no mean fame, and giv- 
ing promise of a greater future, the most creditable 
pupil his impatient teacher ever turned out of her 
little country school. 

With the same quiet persistence he had kept up 
other intellectual activities, had become a splendid 
mathematician, a deep reader in the literature of 
his profession and its allied branches, and alto- 
gether one of the best versed, soundest cultured men 
with whom you might wish to spend a day. He 
had a mind strong, capable, varied in powers, but 
always slow moving. For such a slow but thorough 
mind, not quantity of practise counts, but practise 
taken as leisurely as it desires. Where other chil- 
dren might need to work ten problems to inculcate 
exactness, Karl needed to work but one. Had his 
teacher been able to diagnose his case and to fit 
her teachings to him, Karl would have made in 
actual acquisition of knowledge in a given time, 
as much progress as the average pupil and that 
knowledge would have remained with him forever. 

The Concrete Mind. — The slow boy is not the 
only one whom the course of study and the method 
of teaching in the public school do not fit. Obser- 
vations in many far-removed places indicate that 
there is a type of mind which fails ignominiously 
to grasp knowledge when presented in the abstract 
or by means of symbols, but which readily seizes 
upon the concrete and revels in things which the 
eye sees and the hands handle. Such children are 



62 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

often considered to be predestined to manual labor, 
tillers of the soil by right of birth, hewers of wood 
and drawers of water, shut out of the upper realms 
where the intellectuals who read, write and reckon, 
dwell. Shut out, they often are, but not so much 
by Providence as by a steel-riveted school-system 
called "common" or universal. Here is such a case 
from Miss Elizabeth Farrel's report from New 
York City, Note the cry of such a mind for its 
opportunity to secure an education. 

This boy, fourteen years old, can not spell words 
like "girl," does not know how much are three times 
twelve ; and reads second readers only. Yet his gen- 
eral information is fair; his attention and memory 
are good ; and at night he reads his lessons over and 
over for fear of his father and teachers who "think 
he is lazy and unwilling to learn." While fourteen 
winters and summers have built up this boy's body 
to its height and weight, his intellect is equal to 
that of a seven-year-old child. 

But when he is freed from purely intellectual 
matters and turns to manual work the miracle is 
wrought. All his physical training is good, at 
school the teachers have him doing all sorts of 
work. He is especially interested in electrical ap- 
paratus and keeps all the electrical bells in repair 
at home. One summer he wanted a bicycle and 
wanted it as only a boy can want a thing. He 
managed to unearth two old bicycles and proposed 
to make one good one out of them. In spite of as- 



MINDS IN STRAIGHT JACKETS 63 

surances from wiser heads that it could not be done, 
he went right ahead, took apart, made over, re-ar- 
ranged, planned and perspired until he had accom- 
plished his purpose and rode his contraption about 
the country roads as happy as a millionaire in a 
touring car. 

His disposition is good, but with home, school 
and society against him, it is growing worse. 
Under the criticism he receives he is gradually sink- 
ing. He does not play naturally, he tends to spend 
his time alone; his shyness, timidity, feeling of 
inadequacy and doubt are slowly building around 
him the prison walls of failure within which he 
will be confined a morose and solitary soul. Such 
would be the inevitable outcome under ordinary 
circumstances; but it will not be the end here, be- 
cause there is a special class and a teacher who 
understands this cry of his: "I don't know why 
I can't get on at school ; I can't spell nor write nor 
do arithmetic. I can do any sort of hand-work; 
I seem to understand that by nature, but I can't 
carry anything in my mind. I mean I can't see a 
thing in the shop window and go home and make 
any part of the toy or machine by having just seen 
it in the shop. I want to be an electrician, but 
realize I must know more about books if I am to 
do any good work in life. If I could get an edu- 
cation through my hands it would be easy." 

The Salvation of Sam. — Out in the mountains 
of western Pennsylvania, a great hulking boy, 



64 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

large for his age of sixteen, was in his first year of 
high school. He was strong and healthy, with a 
frank open face, and eyes that looked the simplicity 
of the mind back of them. There was nothing 
unusual in his personal appearance. He would 
have been taken by any casual onlooker for a typical 
high-school boy with evident predilection for ath- 
letics. The more thoughtful observer would have 
wondered why he was sixteen and just entering 
high school. The fact was that he was a retarded 
boy, presenting a not very unusual type of mind 
which could deal efficiently and sometimes even 
originally with concrete things, but groped almost 
hopelessly in semi-darkness among the abstractions 
of any pure science or symbolic knowledge. 

His schooling in the grades had been a long- 
drawn struggle, always verging on failure. He 
had fallen behind his schoolmates until he was two 
years retarded. His teachers had lost heart and 
hope and had promoted him from grade to grade 
on his age, on half what he should have known, 
and in answer to his mother's importunate prayers. 
He could not handle arithmetical relations with 
any facility, though he could count money readily, 
could make change and could see far into prob- 
lems of mensuration when illustrated with any kind 
of models. He read but poorly, had no taste for 
literature, spelled atrociously, learned his geography 
from the maps and his hygiene from the charts, 
remembered his history from what his mother read 



MINDS IN STRAIGHT JACKETS 65 

him at home and from the pictures, and so blun- 
dered along. In grammar he could not comprehend 
the sense or necessity for saying "I" in some places 
and "me" in others, and mixed "done" and "did" 
hopelessly. In fact, he was not much of a talker, 
and when he did say anything, he used the simple 
and incorrect language of his home and his school 
companions. His handwriting was unformed and 
boyish and, when he wrote an original composition, 
he showed a remarkable dearth of ideas and sim- 
plicity of inner life in thought and feeling. In 
short, at sixteen years of age, in all book knowledge, 
Sam was a boy of eleven or twelve years with little 
hope of going far beyond that. 

His character and conduct were all that could 
be desired. He was good natured, with a slow 
easy disposition, rather shy, and avoided company 
instead of seeking it. In the schoolroom he seemed 
to try in a dull slave-minded way to get his lessons, 
and on the playground he looked on while others 
played oftener than he himself played. After 
school, and during vacation, he spent much time 
out-of-doors. He waded the mountain streams, 
tramped the woods, knew the beasts and birds, 
which he studied with curiosity, but without system, 
but never hunted or killed, though he came to know 
intuitively their songs, cries, nesting times and hid- 
ing-places. 

At home he was the same good-natured fellow, 
doing his few chores and taking his rebukes for 



66 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

his poor scholarship from his ambitious mother 
and more phlegmatic father with a wondering pa- 
tience and virtuous humility. His home was the 
usual one belonging to a foreman in a small boiler 
shop. His father had never learned much in school, 
had left before he completed the grades and had 
slowly risen to his present position by diligent work 
and knowledge of his trade gained wholly by in- 
tuition and rule-of-thumb practise. 

Sam's mother was the head of the family. It 
had long been her ambition to make something 
more of her only child than his father ever prom- 
ised to be. Like all good mothers she thought the 
only road to glory lay through the well-ordered 
demesne of public schools. So far she had been 
little encouraged by Sam's progress, but her un- 
faltering ambition had kept him in the grades and 
had finally started him in high school, two years 
behind the usual age, generally retarded, and espe- 
cially lacking in power to comprehend book knowl- 
edge. 

There his reception was anything but cordial. 
Living as he did in a small town, the high-school 
teachers knew him by reputation, and were 
acquainted, too, with the pertinacity of Sam's 
mother, who was determined not to let him fail nor 
to remove him from school until he had secured the 
coveted high-school diploma. Since Sam was in 
nowise prepared for the ordinary work of the sec- 
ondary school, since Latin, or any other language 



MINDS IN STRAIGHT JACKETS 67 

was wholly out of the question, since general re- 
tardation made the subject of English, or litera- 
ture, or pure mathematics, almost hopeless tasks, 
they looked on the necessity of teaching him with 
anything but enthusiasm. 

Fortunately for Sam, he and manual training 
entered the high school together. He had handled 
tools more or less at home. Very likely he would 
have done more of such work had his father's oc- 
cupation been one that lent itself easily to home 
practise, or one that necessitated a work-bench and 
chest of tools in the cellar. But his work was con- 
fined to the shop, and by his wife's command he 
left his menial tasks behind him when he came 
home. Hence Sam's real introduction to tools and 
hand-work, carpenter's benches, lathes, anvils, 
forges, and all the practicalities of the new educa- 
tion came in the high school. It was a veritable 
entrance upon a new life. For him, things seen, 
things palpable and tangible which the hands handle 
and the muscles strained over comprised the eternal 
verities of existence and spoke inspiring words to 
his innermost soul. School, heretofore a word of 
stagnant meaning and a place of dead monotony, 
became gradually a center of vivacious interest and 
vital powers. 

He took up the course in manual training. That 
relieved him from the abstract studies like lan- 
guages. He responded readily to the mechanical 
work, loved the forge, the machine shop, and the 



68 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

work-bench. His interest did not cease with the 
school hours, but he carried his zeal for his work 
into his home, and, in spite of the half-hearted op- 
position of his mother, and with the ready acqui- 
escence of his father, he set about arranging a 
workshop in the cellar, and gradually accumulated 
a set of tools. Inspired partly by his father's trade, 
and partly by his innate desire to make something 
that moved, he spent his evenings for many months 
building and assembling a small steam-engine. The 
parts of it came from many places and by devious 
routes to their ultimate destination. The machine 
was fearfully and wonderfully made. It was un- 
wieldy and ill proportioned, but when it was fin- 
ished, the oil lamp lighted underneath the boiler 
made from a cut-down kitchen range water tank, 
the steam finally turned on, and with sundry wheez- 
ings and sputterings, the wabbly flywheel of the 
engine started, Sam heaved one great sigh of relief, 
and for almost the first time in his life, drank in 
draft on draft from the full cup of success. He 
had made something and it would go. He had 
conceived an idea, imperfectly, vaguely, dimly at 
first, but it had imfolded as he advanced with his 
work, and piece by piece it had grown until what 
at first seemed to him but an impossible dream of 
the night, now stood there a concrete and animated 
reality. How much that poor accomplishment 
meant to that groping soul, how it gave him the 
sense of power to grip his heretofore flitting ideas, 



MINDS IN STRAIGHT JACKETS 69 

how, for the first time in his conscious hfe, ideas 
themselves became sources of great possible achieve- 
ments, nobody will ever know. It must all be 
guessed by what accompanied and followed that 
steam-engine building. 

In the meantime, his schooling had gone on. 
His manual work improved in its quality. It was 
not better than that of the best students, for Sam 
was never a brilliant pupil in anything, but it was 
as good as the best, and wonderfully good in com- 
parison to his book studies. It made his teachers 
more lenient with him in other things. It brought 
the feeling of ability and acquainted him with the 
inspiration of success, and that again served to 
spur him on to harder work in other directions. 
Then, too, it offered him living points of contact 
with other studies, and in this respect, more than 
any other study, mechanical drawing served him 
best. It stood for him at the center of the intricate 
web of knowledge, from which in one direction his 
mind went out readily to his beloved mechanical 
operations, and in the other, felt its way with in- 
creasing certainty through the dawning twilight of 
abstract knowledge. The kernel of the matter was 
contained in the process of forming and elaborating 
an idea, then rendering that idea visible on paper, 
and then, by those paper directions, transforming 
it into a palpable, tangible thing of beauty and joy 
forever. It was just the process needed by a mind 
like Sam's, and just that process which his primary 



70 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

school never offered, and which his mother, in her 
uninformed zeal for "education," had opposed at 
home. 

New terms came with these studies and his vo- 
cabulary grew apace. The necessity for exact 
legends on drawings compelled him to spell ac- 
curately. His handwriting was always fair and his 
lettering was especially good. Free-hand drawing 
came to him rapidly and easily. He began to search 
mechanical journals for ideas and that helped his 
reading, but it must be confessed that Sam never 
did take to literature and the school methods never 
helped him much there. He grew to see the use of 
mathematics. Fundamentals like multiplication 
tables became usable and time-saving devices and 
accordingly of increased value and interest. Plane 
and solid geometry acquired meanings beyond the 
confusing patterns of purely imaginary lines and 
surfaces. On the whole, he pursued his course 
steadily, gaining in all his studies, and developing 
in his mentality. No special methods were used to 
teach him in his classes. Possibly the rapid increase 
in mental power accompanying and following 
pubescence, corrected a disparity between his previ- 
ous physical and mental development, and gave him 
the necessary power to seize upon his manual train- 
ing and to see through the concrete to the abstract. 
At any rate, he did grow. 

His great awakening dated from the steam- 
engine. That was a home affair. His great school 



MINDS IN STRAIGHT JACKETS 71 

victory came when one day toward the end of his 
three years' course, his teacher announced that a 
chair was to be built for an educational exhibit in 
the state capitol. The crowning piece of work was 
to be the back, the honor of carving which was to 
go to the student offering the best original design. 
Sam went into the competition with a fearful 
fluttering heart. He worked nights, feeling his 
way into the invisible and unknown for his design. 
He faltered more than once, but the designing of 
the old steam-engine came back to him as he toiled, 
and the lessons he learned with it carried him 
through this infinitely larger task. Probably no 
other boy in that class took the matter so to heart; 
certainly no other one toiled so hard. Possibly it 
was as much the marks of infinite pains as orig- 
inality of design that made the judges award Sam 
the privilege of making the piece of honor. The 
report came to him with much of the old thrill ex- 
perienced when his crazy engine started, but ac- 
companied with a humility and self-control not then 
known. The carving was yet to be done, but it was 
carried on with all the painstaking care of an artist 
engaged upon an altar piece, and when it was fin- 
ished, it was a credit to the school. Some months 
later Sam stood in the capitol, saw with his own 
eyes the very work of his hands, looking strange 
and yet familiar as it stood on its platform, and 
experienced the rare pleasure-pain of hearing a 
work praised of which he knew the defects as only 



72 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

the man wlio wrought the work could possibly know 
them. 

He was graduated with his class. He did not 
win any honors. He was not on the commence- 
ment program, but he probably learned more in four 
years than any other student in the class. His 
mother was as happy as any woman there that night. 
Then Sam went to work in the drafting room of 
the shop in which his father worked. 

He worked hard and was advanced rapidly. 
To-day he is a designer of machinery in a large 
manufactory, holding a responsible position and 
sure of advancement. He is devoted to his work, 
faithful, enthusiastic, untiring, inventive, still a 
little uncertain of his grammar, not talkative nor 
given much to society, but he is a strong man in his 
profession and may some day reach the top. 

When one stops and thinks what he might have 
been had he been continuously forced to grapple 
with the abstract problems of the ordinary high- 
school course based upon literature, languages, pure 
mathematics and pure sciences, until he either failed 
ignominiously or had rebelled against further 
schooling and gone out into the world untrained in 
anything, and fit only for the least skilled labor, 
without a sense of success, and with the habit of 
failure, then the real magnitude of his development 
can be measured. 

Backward Because Not Interested in Lessons. 
— Few children in the world wholly lack interest. 



MINDS IN STRAIGHT JACKETS 73 

They are always interested in a few things and 
usually interested in many things. In fact, their 
fault lies in the large number and the lightning-like 
changes of their interests rather than in the fewness 
of them. Hence, we frequently blame them because 
their attention, unlike that of grown people, is not 
subdued to a durable and lasting concentration on 
one or two subjects, and modified by experience to 
a mildness that does not interfere with good judg- 
ment. Sometimes, however, a child does display 
an attention similar to that of a specialist. In that 
case the child gets no credit for the display, but 
immediately becomes the object of most solicitous 
attention and urgent treatment. Especially is this 
true where the interest is wholly consumed on mat- 
ters not pertaining to lessons, or to those activi- 
ties common to other children, or to society. As 
a result of the child's narrow interest, he will attend 
to only a few activities and neglect others. Re- 
tardation in the larger affairs of life and in school 
is the inevitable result. This may be much or little 
depending upon the degree of attention remaining 
for those things we call lessons. In some cases the 
lack of attention appears to be absolutely patholog- 
ical. All such instances, however, must not be taken 
to indicate hopeless mental retardation for life, as 
I shall try to show in the following example. 

Katie, let us call her, was a little girl who spent 
the first nine years of her life without sisters or 
brothers, or playmates, ^hen other girls of her 



74 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

age were in school in the third or fourth grades, 
she was at home in a room, sitting all day alone 
talking to herself in a very limited vocabulary, play- 
ing with the ragged dolls of her own simple manu- 
facture, eating rudely and crudely her meals by 
herself, since her lack of manners forbade her 
eating with grown people, speaking to others almost 
never, and answering when spoken to only in mono- 
syllables, signs, or meaningless grunts. She needed 
constant attention; she could not be permitted to 
go much out-of-doors; she could not play at all 
with other children. In short, all who knew her 
thought her to be an idiot, or an imbecile at best, 
without much mind and without hope of ever arriv- 
ing at any but the simplest lessons of life. Such 
was Katie at nine years of age. 

Then her parents heard of some children similar 
to her who had been wonderfully helped by special 
training and she was taken to a clinic. There the 
psychologist examined her carefully and found 
nothing in her family history or her own life to 
substantiate genuine f eeble-mindedness. Diphtheria 
in her early childhood had caused some retardation 
of her growth and activities, and this, combined 
with her subsequent loneliness and neglect, had 
prevented her mind from expanding as it should 
have done. Her physical condition was fair; she 
had no special defects of the senses; she ate, slept, 
played in her own way. But she did not pay at- 
tention to lessons, people, or things; she seemed to 



MINDS IN STRAIGHT JACKETS 75 

have no interest; there appeared no way to arouse 
her dormant faculties to any realization of the daily 
events about her ; she lacked the curiosity, the desire 
for novelty, and the enthusiasm of normal children. 
While not positively bad or unruly in any way 
except one, she was immune to the effects of all 
the usual punishments and rewards to arouse her 
to an interest in duties and studies usual to the aver- 
age child. Her parents had tried in their way but 
had failed. The father was a busy man, away from 
home much of the time, and the mother was a frail 
delicate woman who did not possess the health or 
the energy to do what was necessary to train so 
strange a child. Katie had been left largely in the 
hands of nurses in her babyhood and largely to 
herself in her childhood. Much of this neglect was 
also due to her terrible temper. If any attempt was 
made to force her to some task or to prevent her 
from doing the few simple things she liked to do, 
she first paid no attention, then grew sullen, then 
broke out into a paroxysm of anger, ending by 
crying, screaming, scratching, kicking and biting. 
Nothing would stop the attack except letting her 
alone, and that her mother and nurse had learned 
to do. Under these conditions, lacking, as she did, 
those springs within herself which force normal 
children to explore the world in which they find 
themselves, this child had lived a strange isolated 
existence, shut up in the fancies of her own mind, 
knowing little and caring less for the great world 



16 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

of interests that fills the lives of others. To the 
innumerable marvels of this w^orld she was insen- 
sible. She was psychically blind, deaf, dumb, almost 
without human emotions, desires, thoughts or vo- 
litions. 

On the advice of the specialist a teacher was 
secured. This woman came to live in the home. 
She began with a quiet study of her strange charge. 
She found that Katie, though almost absolutely 
destitute of interests, did have a few. While most 
of the time during the day she sat, wide-eyed and 
wondering, with mind apparently blank, or mut- 
tered words to herself, at other times, she repeated 
over and over again rhythmic syllables without 
meaning and with little tune, but in a sing-song 
manner. That was a clue to the teacher. When 
Katie *'tra-la-la-ed," the teacher did the same and 
they both fell into unison. Katie seemed to enjoy 
it. She kept up the exercise longer than when she 
did it alone. Next, the teacher noted if she began 
it first and kept it up for a little while, Katie would 
also begin the rhythm. 

The next stage came when the little girl showed 
by unmistakable signs that she was actually enjoy- 
ing the fun ; and the next when she made it known 
by pulling the teacher's hand, grunting that she 
wanted her teacher to "sing" with her. It was easy 
to fix a sign to this desire and Katie learned the 
"ting" and learned to iterate it, with sundry other 
signs, until the teacher would start the tune. From 



MINDS IN STRAIGHT JACKETS 77 

those simple beginnings came the whole after-train- 
ing of the little girl who seemed at first so hopeless. 

A piano was added to the equipment and the 
teacher drummed upon it the rhythmic scale they 
had been singing. At first the music fell upon 
dead ears. Gradually, however, the strange girl 
whose only interest was in rhythm, began to note 
the sound and to fall into harmony with it until, 
as in her previous accompaniment of her teacher's 
voice, she likewise learned to follow the piano. 
That was a great event and the teacher's joy in it 
was faintly shared by the groping mind beginning 
to taste for the first time the pleasure of attainment. 
From notes and snatches of melody, more or less 
disconnected, they went on to little songs. Words 
were added, albeit slowly and laboriously, until 
Katie's monotonous life became comparatively rich 
and variegated in its new activities. 

Along with the singing and music Katie learned 
to beat time; first widi her hands and then with 
her feet. Very soon, for she began to show a 
genius for such things, she proceeded to dancing; 
and with that came a whole flood of health-giving 
and developing exercises. Then her teacher ven- 
tured to take her to a theater where dancing occu- 
pied a large part in the performance. In the life 
of this little hermit that day was a pilgrimage to 
a promised land. She came home burning with a 
new ambition. She was wild to imitate what she 
had seen. She practised her dancing with all her 



78 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

might and learned it rapidly. Theater-going be- 
came a part of her education; its sights and sounds 
were the stimulators of her endeavors and the re- 
wards of her achievements; the stage was the goal 
of her ambition. 

One day she thought of the clothes those splendid 
people on the stage wore. She wanted dresses like 
them. Her wise teacher saw another opportunity 
and proposed that they make the dresses themselves. 
That introduced into the curriculum all the mys- 
teries and discipline of sewing. How that pro- 
ceeded, first painfully and laboriously, but finally 
triumphantly, I must let the teacher who has taught 
it imagine. When Katie, arrayed in one of her 
own creations, preened herself before the mirror, 
which had been brought into her room, and then 
pirouetted across the room like the great ladies of 
the stage world, she did it with all the abandon of 
a normal child dressed in her mother's skirts. 

From dancing and costuming, it was only a step 
to acting, to repeating dialogues, at first elementary, 
incoherent and sketchy; from dialogues to recita- 
tions, committed to memory with rapidly increasing 
power under the stimulation of great and enthusi- 
astic interest. Under such tuition, Katie's mind 
grew like a long-delayed plant taken from the cellar 
and set in the sun. Her power of concentration 
grew daily and her memory with it ; her vocabulary 
multiplied itself; her increasing powers of acquisi- 
tion naturally led her on to continually more am- 



! MINDS IN STRAIGHT JACKETS 79 

bitious tasks, and keen enjoyment of her new-found 
varieties of self-expression spurred her to continu- 
ous effort. The balance maintained between the 
exercise contained in dancing and sewing and the 
mental activity found in memorizing and reciting, 
saved her from any untoward effects which she 
might have suffered from a too rapid mental 
growth. 

Her teacher had wisely left her moral training 
in the background. Her temper had been the chief 
obstacle to any education that her mother might 
have given her. Coercion of any kind, as I have 
already said, had always thrown her into tantrums, 
which ended in complete collapses for her mother 
and nervous spasms for herself. Though the fre- 
quency of such outbreaks had continually dimin- 
ished with the multiplication of her interests, they 
still remained, and on occasions, Katie showed with 
due fierceness her old-time paroxysms. She soon 
found, however, that her steady-nerved teacher did 
not collapse and give up. She was told also that 
whenever she gave way to such tempers she would 
not be taken to the beloved theater, and found that 
when such an edict went forth, it was irrevocable. 
Though she screamed, stamped, danced and threw 
herself on the floor and kicked, it was energy 
wasted, and the little lady gradually learned the 
great moral lesson of obedience. On the other 
hand, she found that docility and diligent applica- 
tion to lessons and tasks always met with their de- 



80 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

served rewards. Therefore she soon fell into doing 
what was told her and not doing what was for- 
bidden her. 

To this training was added the stimulation of 
great examples. She worshiped the heroines and 
heroes of the stage. When she was arrayed in her 
home-made finery, her lively imagination and power 
of mimicry transformed her in her own mind into 
something very closely akin, if not identical, with 
these demigods. Of course, she expected some day 
to become one of them really and truly. "If that 
is so," said her teacher, "then you must be like 
them all the time. You must be patient, courteous, 
kind, noble and queenly, just as those people are." 
And Katie tried with all her might. 

From love of music she came to playing music. 
At first she played by enr. Then she undertook 
regular music lessons and learned a new meaning 
and extracted an unlimited pleasure from the pe- 
culiar black-knobbed signs on the music sheets. It 
was not very long before she mastered the simplest 
music. Then her attention reached out to the other 
symbols in black that ran between the notes and 
from which her teacher taught her the words of 
songs. Could she learn those, too? Certainly. 
And so reading began and went on rapidly. Then 
the reading of simple plays followed, and almost 
before Katie knew it she was ushered into another 
world of great characters in fiction. 

All this time, the other activities of her life were 



MINDS IN STRAIGHT JACKETS 81 

cared for. Her exercises grew out of her dancing. 
Once the pleasure of movement was tasted, it could 
not be confined to one variety. The usual chil- 
dren's exercises — jumping the rope, running, 
swinging clubs and dumb-bells — came into play. 
Health and strength increased aboundingly. Games 
followed ; then playmates came in and took part and 
along with them came all the world of self-control 
and unselfishness and the awakening of friendship 
and love. Sewing and the piano practise gave first 
manual lessons. They were continued in dressing, 
washing, eating and all the amenities of polite life, 
all of them inspired by the ambition to become like 
the personages of the stage or the novel. 

From musical notes and letters in song and 
drama, Katie passed to other studies, and mastered 
them fairly well for one so long retarded. The 
weary steps she took in a few years, the hours of 
labor, the lapses she suffered in intellectual and 
moral training, the patience required by her teacher, 
I shall pass over. They were there and they were 
discouraging enough. In all of them the firm and 
skilful trainer supplied the will that poor Katie 
lacked and without which her life would in all 
probability have continued enclosed to the end in 
the psychic prison in which it began. In about three 
years the little girl who at nine was counted an 
imbecile had developed so marvelously that she 
could take her part in any company of twelve-year- 
old children, and could comport herself with the 



82 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

manners of a proper child in any society. She was 
an inveterate and earnest reader, possessed a com- 
paratively rich and varied command of language 
and an expressed ambition "to add at least one new 
word to her vocabulary every day." 

Katie's case is interesting from many points of 
view. It is such an extreme one that teachers never 
expect to see one like it in school, and parents feel 
it to be utterly unthinkable to have one like it in 
their home. Yet at bottom, Katie's difficulty might 
be exemplified in milder form in numberless in- 
stances. Notice, she was not mentally abnormal. 
She was not dull, nor stupid, nor slow. She was 
not a "born criminal," nor a moral imbecile, nor 
a degenerate fallen from higher moral planes. She 
had no bad family history, nor any diseases in her 
own lifetime which left indelible marks. Katie was 
merely the victim of extreme bad management. The 
core of all her later troubles lay in her lack of 
those varied interests which compel ordinary chil- 
dren to educate themselves. All her evils developed 
when unskilled adults, without a study of her con- 
dition, undertook to force her into the usual molds 
of training. She was made of stubborn metal, 
tough, fine-grained, high-tempered, and the molds 
broke. Then came a seer who perceived the germ 
of her mental life, treated Katie as if she was a 
living organism and a human being, fitted instruc- 
tion to pupil, saved a soul from mental torture and 
formed a noble woman out of a potential maniac. 



CHAPTER V 



BAD AND BACKWARD 



BACKWARDNESS and badness are sometimes 
related as cause to effect. A boy is back- 
ward because he is bad. This happens in school 
where conduct counts so much for advancement 
that sometimes amiable feeble-minded children are 
promoted from grade to grade with praise for their 
splendid behavior and for their evident sincere at- 
tempts to study, while pupils really bright are held 
back in their grades and counted mentally retarded 
because they are unruly. No teacher, of course, 
deliberately plans such anomalies of educational 
practise. But for that very reason, because such 
unintended results sometimes follow, we should 
study the matter. The following case illustrates 
some of the evils arising from treating bad bright 
boys as if they were mentally retarded. 

George was brought to the clinic by his mother 
because his school said he was a backward boy. He 
did not look it, nor did he in his appearance live 
up to the stories told about him and the confessions 
he later made. It was a curious confusion due to 
opposite view-points, and a natural confusion of 

83 



84 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

opinions that was presented by the teachers and 
his mother. But first let us have a look at the boy. 

He was about twelve years of age; well dressed, 
clean, red-cheeked, slightly freckled through his 
tanned skin. The tan argued that he was much out- 
of-doors; for it is unusual, even in summer, for a 
city boy to secure such a healthy coat of brown. 
He was a manly-looking fellow, strong and well, 
with broad shoulders, a quiet, somewhat suppressed 
manner which spoke as much for self-control as it 
did for discipline, as much for a hidden life as it 
did training in manners. In his own history there 
was not a sign of abnormality. Neither was there 
an item in his family history that could be con- 
strued as moral or mental deficiency. All this was 
borne out also by his mother's general appearance 
and by her evident character and ability. She was 
a widow engaged in some easy and lucrative work 
befitting her capacity, so that George suffered 
neither the hardships nor the privations of an or- 
phaned boy, except that his mother was forced to 
be away from home during the day, and he lacked 
the sympathetic understanding and the guidance of 
a father when he needed them most. 

The history of his schooling was altogether of 
a different color. At six years of age George had 
started to the regular public school in a large eastern 
city. From the beginning he did well and for three 
years gave absolutely no trouble, learning his lessons 
like a worthy pupil, securing good grades and be- 



BAD AND BACKWARD 85 

having like a little gentleman. Then for some un- 
explained reason, in one of those educational re- 
arrangements common to growing neighborhoods, 
George found himself compelled to go to another 
public school in quite another neighborhood. It 
was not such a great distance from his home, but 
it was in a neighborhood infinitely removed from 
his in social conditions. From boys of his own 
class he passed to boys of an altogether different 
class: children from the slums, whites and blacks, 
whose homes and no-account parents made them 
what they were, objects of pity rather than objects 
of censure, but little demons, nevertheless, potent 
with influences and powers to make others like 
themselves. 

The new boy had his troubles from the first. 
He was a stranger and therefore a suspicious char- 
acter. After the first flush of antagonism because 
of his strangeness had worn off his evident social 
superiority, his good-breeding and his scholarship, 
made him a natural enemy to the hoodlum element. 
Like all strange boys in that school he had to fight 
his way. That he could do with right good gusto. 
George was no weakling; he was not a coward, nor 
was he sickly, nor had he any squeamish ethical 
ideas that unfitted him for the robustious world of 
boys into which he had been thrown. His training 
on the streets had not refined away any of his 
natural Irish belligerency, nor imbued him with any 
notions of passive resistance. Likewise he had a 



86 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

just estimate of his superior social position and 
made no concealment of the fact that he considered 
his removal from the other school unjust and his 
association with these new companions a degrada- 
tion. Naturally he had to fight for such ideals; 
and fight he did with the necessary frequency and 
the necessary vigor. As a result he both gained 
and lost. He made himself a solid place in the boy- 
world where he was respected and where he ruled 
with a good-natured despotism. For it must be 
said to his credit that he never picked a quarrel and 
he never fought unless he thought he had to do so 
for some principle, or for some end to be gained. 
Of course, the tales of his fighting reached the 
teachers. He was reprimanded and punished. He 
went through all the formalities to which a boy is 
subjected by a machine that attempts to force the 
standards of civilized and cultured life upon a bar- 
barian society. His teachers lectured him on the 
ungentlemanliness of fighting with bad boys, ap- 
pealed to his evident superior breeding, besought 
him in his mother's name, scolded, kept him after 
school, wrote notes to his mother, gave him marks 
of demerit, cut down his grades, threatened to send 
him to the school for incorrigibles, and finally, in 
despair, themselves descended to his plane, and 
seizing the rod of superior physical prowess pro- 
ceeded with exactly the same tactics that George 
found he had been compelled to pursue on the play- 



BAD AND BACKWARD 87 

ground. Through it all, the teachers felt doubly 
outraged because they believed that the boy was 
bright and could settle down and study in peace 
and quiet if he only would do it. However, his 
study continued to suffer and his reputation for 
pugnacity grew. It is an open question whether 
George did not find more compensation from the 
knowledge of supremacy in his own world than he 
lost from the feeling of failure in the school-world. 
He had entered the first stages of the real hoodlum. 
His principal, at last worn out with attempts to 
reform George, sent him to a school for the in- 
corrigibles. There he was to stay until he worked 
his way out by a system of credits whereby every 
day's good conduct was rewarded with a ticket, 
thirty of which released the young prisoner from 
his ignominious incarceration. H his former school 
was a school of pugnacity the second was infinitely 
worse. Here the lowest boys of many neighbor- 
hoods were corralled; pugnacity was concentrated; 
truancy was incarnated and walked abroad in visible 
heroes who would "bag" school in the face of cer- 
tain death; burglars in embryo, pickpockets in the 
tutelage, gamblers in reality, braggadocios in petty 
criminality, heroes of juvenile courts and houses 
of detention, stalked about like kings with their 
followers, many of whom were feeble-minded and 
all of whom were in that impressionable and sug- 
gestible stage where daredevil misdemeanors lent 



88 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

to the perpetrator a glamour beside which the halo 
of a saint flickered and went out like a candle in the 
Valley of Death. 

So at least it looked to George and the other 
boys, according to his story to the clinic staff. For- 
tunately George was too bright and too well-bred 
to be caught with the tinsel of cheap viciousness 
and the showy exhibition of vulgar vainglory. The 
whole thing bored him. All he wanted was to be let 
alone. That peace was impossible to be had ex- 
cept by fighting for it. "Why didn't you work your 
way out by merits?" George was asked. *T did 
try," he answered wearily, "but the other fellows 
wouldn't leave me alone. Once I got twenty-nine 
tickets and then I had to lick a fellow that got 
fresh, and they took all my tickets away again." 

It was hard for the clinic staff to believe that this 
clean-cut chap, who ought by all odds to have been 
a good scholar in a regular school, had been kept 
in a place like that for causes like that for nearly 
two years, but his mother corroborated the story 
and later it was found to be true by the clinic social 
worker. 

The opinion of George's mother varied essen- 
tially from the lurid reputation he had acquired at 
school. She insisted that he was a good boy; that 
he was gentlemanly in his conduct, obedient at 
home, regular in his habits and diligent in his at- 
tempts to get his lessons. When asked how he 
spent his evenings, she affirmed that he usually spent 



BAD AND BACKWARD 89 

them at home, but he went out sometimes, and once 
a week with her permission, attended the moving- 
picture show. All his troubles at school she blamed 
on the principal, who, she averred, had taken a 
violent dislike to her son, and had maliciously kept 
him in a school for incorrigibles for a period be- 
yond all justice or reason. It might be said in 
passing that George did not entirely deserve this 
angelic opinion of his mother and he admitted that 
he frequently slipped out at night and got into the 
moving-picture show by doing odd jobs for the 
manager. I believe, too, he admitted to a recently 
acquired taste for cigarettes. If he did not smoke 
and swear he must have been born a saint. 

Such was the situation. Undoubtedly George 
was not retarded because of any mental deficiency. 
His trouble was badness ; or, to be more correct and 
specific, — fighting. From all appearances his fight- 
ing was forced on him by circumstances. Like 
primitive man, he knew no other mode of settling 
his difHculties in the society where he had fallen 
through no fault of his own. When this conclusion 
was reached, friends laid the matter before the 
superintendent of schools who cut some red tape 
and speedily removed George to his old school 
where he first started. There George settled down 
again to study, left off fighting more than the usual 
amount necessary to boys and conducive to order 
in their world, and at last accounts was making up 
lost ground. 



90 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

A Hopeless Case. — Admit it we must: some 
children are born bad and they can not be cured 
of their badness. This fact, unbelievable to some 
people, and not discerned in individual cases by 
others, has led and continues to lead to many com- 
plications and much confusion regarding the moral 
training of children. Theories are laid down by 
traditions or by inventors, methods are elaborated 
to fit them, and all comes to naught because the 
child was not carefully studied and his true condi- 
tion ascertained before any effort was made to cure 
him. Some mental defect always accompanies true 
moral imbecility. With the clinics for children well 
organized, as they are to-day, guesswork is not nec- 
essary. That it will be continued for some time to 
come is a prophecy in line with all history. It 
takes time for new knowledge to escape from the 
confines of laboratories and to penetrate the prac- 
tises of the crowd. The following illustration 
shows many things; chief among them is the fact 
that moral imbecility exists, that scientists can diag- 
nose it, and that long and costly experimentation 
brings the doubters to the same conclusion. 

Rose was a girl about eleven years old when she 
came to a clinic. She was a well-formed beautiful 
child, with a face in which the hint of voluptuous- 
ness was chastened into cherubic purity by the in- 
nocence of childhood; with eyes that were full and 
deep as the sky in June, and as untarnished as a 
violet by the spring, with hair that fell in long 



BAD AND BACKWARD 91 

chestnut curls, crisp and shimmering in its wealth 
and health. Her teeth were large and white and 
her charming smile unveiled them frankly with an 
inviting trust and wholesome good-humor. Her 
skin was clear and clean, a surprising fact consid- 
ering that she came from a very poor family. She 
suffered from adenoids, enlarged tonsils and a slight 
defect of vision. She was brought to a clinic be- 
cause she was expelled from school for general mis- 
behavior. She spent her time while away from school 
on the streets and in the alleys, playing and fighting, 
stealing rides on wagons and fleeing the police. 
Her home was poor in all its aspects, physical, 
mental and moral. The less said about the family 
the better. Sufficient will it be to remark that while 
there were no marked mental or moral abnormalities 
in her family, all of her immediate relatives were 
worthless or nearly so. There were some positive 
immoralities, but they were of the weak kind, ar- 
guing for no character, not bad character. All of 
her relatives, her mother, father, sisters and 
brothers, might have been summarized in that most 
significant southern phrase, "poor white trash." To 
the clinicist, this was the most damaging testimony 
in the whole case. 

Rose exhibited a similar weakness in mental ca- 
pacities. She was not distinctly feeble-minded, but 
she was fearfully retarded for no reason except ir- 
regular attendance at school and her inability to 
learn when she was there. She was twelve years 



92 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

of age and in the second grade, and not up to that 
grade in some studies. Poor heredity and bad en- 
vironment had cooperated all through her life, and 
before her life, to make her an exceedingly bad and 
backward child, though fair and beautiful to look 
upon. The impartial clinicist pronounced his verdict 
according to the evidence, that it was useless to try 
to keep her in society, and advised that she be sent 
to some institution where she would be protected 
from herself and prevented from doing the damage 
to society that she would not fail to do if she were 
permitted to go at large. However, Rose had suc- 
ceeded by her charms in touching the heart of a very 
splendid young woman who gave herself without 
stint to aiding unfortunate children anywhere and 
everywhere. This good-hearted girl deemed the re- 
sults of the examination too harsh and hard and 
made up her mind to give Rose another chance. 

She secured the child's admission to an institution 
for children in the country where Rose for the 
first time in her life entered a healthy and pleasant 
home. As a result of the novelty, her conduct for 
two weeks was reported as good in every way. Then 
she went back to her own home again. Her conduct 
soon reverted to its former evil state. Her play- 
ground was the street, and her conduct so disorderly 
that the police again interfered and threatened her 
with arrest. Her friend secured her a boarding- 
place in the country where her actions were soon 
reported to be unbearable. Then she went to a chil- 



BAD AND BACKWARD 93 

dren's hospital for an operation and treatment, 
whence, as soon as her treatment was concluded, she 
was removed by request because of her badness. 
Her friend, still stanch in her efforts to save so beau- 
tiful a child, took her into her own home. But it 
was of no avail. Kindness went for naught; it was 
answered by impertinence, disobedience, blasphemy 
and vileness. Back she went to a caretaker in a 
special home. For five weeks she stayed there and 
then her friend took her for a vacation to the sea- 
shore. There she was ill and fairly good for a 
while, but not good enough to show any real de- 
velopment in morality. Her benefactress was be- 
coming discouraged and tried her next in a colony 
for delinquent children. There she was disobedient, 
quarrelsome, used improper and vile language and 
exhibited a marked and vicious propensity for boys' 
society. That was the last attempt to reform her. 
The doors of a house of refuge in which there is 
practically no hope closed upon her and she is there 
now. Six institutions, five doctors and a host of 
friends, none more loyal and patient to be found 
than Rose's benefactress, had tried their utmost 
for a year and a half and had not made the slight- 
est progress in developing a moral nature in the girl. 
Her immorality was due to heredity and environ- 
ment. Her home was poor, her neighborhood bad, 
the effect of her surroundings augmented by phys- 
ical defects. Although attractive in personal appear- 
ance and promising in character, she was devoid of 



94 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

moral sense, and impervious to elevating surround- 
ings or elevating ideals. This brief sketch gives but 
a faint idea of her depravity, her vileness, her de- 
generate tastes, her familiarity with certain crimes, 
her versatility in blasphemous language, all of it 
springing out of a nature that sought vice with the 
unchecked determination of an animal following its 
instincts. Yet she was as beautiful as an angel, 
as sweet as a little child. 

A Pseudo-Moral Imbecile. — To show, how- 
ever, that children may be saved who exhibit on the 
surface all the characteristics and worse ones than 
those just enumerated in Rose's life, let me give a 
brief resume of another case leading to an alto- 
gether different conclusion. In The Psychological 
Clinic, Miss Catlin gives an interesting and detailed 
account of her experiences with a girl who was en- 
trusted to her care for about two years. The child's 
mother died in childbirth and the baby was thrown 
upon the care of nurses and others. At eight she 
was a terror to all who knew her. Her health, un- 
dermined by indulgences of many kinds, was preca- 
rious, her temper frightful, her nature soured and 
warped, her resentment at interference fierce and 
lasting. Her face wore a wolfish aspect that made 
her more animal than human in appearance. The 
family, utterly despairing of doing anything with 
her, sent her to a special trainer. 

There for two years she was compelled to lead a 
physically well-ordered, hygienic life, with the re- 



BAD AND BACKWARD 95 

suit that her health improved greatly but her dispo- 
sition remained about the same. Her teacher, when 
handing the child over to Miss Catlin, reported that 
she was still ungovernable, that she was absolutely 
wanting in "decency, honesty, truth; was cruel, 
sneaky, filthy," and concluded with the firm con- 
viction that the child was insane and should be ex- 
amined by an alienist. In spite of this Miss Catlin 
received her into her care and trained her for two 
years. 

She began with her own diagnosis of the case. 
She took account of stock and reckoned up the 
moral assets and liabilities with which she was to 
begin business. She found that all the evil told of 
the child was true; in fact that half had not been 
told. To all her other evils she added the art of tor- 
menting people out of their wits. She knew how 
because she possessed a bright mind sharpened to 
a keenness almost uncanny by her ten years of con- 
stant warfare against her enemies whom she hated 
with the hatred of a savage and whom she loved to 
out-do by any sort of cunning and to hurt by any 
exquisite torture. Her new teacher soon discov- 
ered another fault which she immediately set down 
as an asset. That was vanity growing out of an all- 
pervading egotism. Her one real streak of gold was 
sympathy which Sarai, let us call her, possessed to 
a marked degree, but which seemingly had never 
been discovered before and certainly had not been 
developed. This quality of sympathy determined 



96 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

the teacher in her choice of the mode of training to 
be followed with this problematical child. 

Immediately she made herself a chum to her 
charge, adopting even the same kind of dress. For 
a month both ran wild on an isolated farm. During 
that time Miss Catlin made herself absolutely in- 
dispensable to her pupil so that even if she were 
away for an hour the girl felt it keenly. For the 
first two weeks the little demon tried by every dia- 
bolical art, like dropping caterpillars down her 
teacher's back, jumping at her from corners, and 
dangling snakes within an inch from her nose, to 
test the staying powers of her new friend's good hu- 
mor. The first streak of dawn in the otherwise dark 
training up to that time, came when the teasing grew 
so unbearaJDle that the teacher took to flight and 
showed by unmistakable signs, not the anger the 
little girl expected, but the awful hurt her friend 
was suffering through her misconduct. She tim- 
idly stole up to her teacher, took her hand and whis- 
pered, "Sister, do you feel like you look?" In that 
moment the teacher knew that her method was right 
and would eventually succeed. 

Every morning there was a thought for the day. 
Then came the stage, most cleverly brought on, 
when the child gave her word for stated tasks and 
never broke her promise. Then the promising was 
generalized and she was asked to promise always 
to do anything she was told. By that time she had 
learned that her new teacher would never ask her 



BAD AND BACKWARD 97 

to do anything arbitrary. Later the two further 
qualifications of "promptness" and "cheerfulness" 
were added and the lesson of obedience was com- 
pletely learned. Cheerfulness was applied to more 
than mere obedience. It was to be carried into 
everything, even to the loss of games which sorely 
tried the little egotist's vanity. One day at tennis, 
Miss C. dropped her racket and said, "See here, I'm 
not going to play out of my class. I'm a sport! 
What are you? Do you know what a sport is?" 

"I'm not sure," the subdued playmate said. 

"Well, it's one who plays fair, and is a good 
loser ! . . . Are you a sport ?" 

"I don't think I was born one," was the honest 
reply, "but I might grow to be one, couldn't I?" 
And you may be sure she received assurances con- 
cerning the prepotency of human will over heredity. 

The thoughts of the morning gradually grew 
from ideals for a day to purposes for life. Her 
teacher early and energetically inculcated the notion 
that everybody without exception should have a 
work in the world and do it with a right good will. 
The kind old gentleman will never know what dis- 
dain and indignation he aroused by calling the girl 
who looks confidently forward to earning her own 
living a "little lady." 

Her schooling after about a month of freedom 
began with one hour's study a day. The beginning 
was as sore a trial as her moral training. Her 
knowledge of books, and almost all else, was prac- 



98 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

tically nothing. Yet she had the supremest opin- 
ion of her own intellectual attainments. She knew 
everything and resented warmly any imputation to 
the contrary. Some of her vagaries were ludicrous. 
When she was given "there" to write and wrote it, 
and immediately following that was given "then," 
she quite economically wrote "hen" underneath it, 
asserting, and quite rightly as far as that fragmen- 
tary situation went, that one "t" could stand for 
both. None but a bright child would have thought 
of that. In such instances nothing but the threat 
of her teacher to leave her would compel the neces- 
sary routine. With these few exceptions her lessons 
went on rapidly. She apparently needed no special 
kind of instruction for her mind was normal, but 
neglected. At the end of four months she went to 
a private school where she continued without diffi- 
culty for eight months. 

At ten years she was a suspected moral imbecile 
with maniacal tendencies, cruel, indecent, dishonest, 
deceitful, tricky, filthy, incapable of living with nor- 
mal people or mixing with ordinary children, a crea- 
ture despised and apparently doomed to a life of 
horror; at twelve she was a well-bred little lady, 
"kindly, lovable, thoughtful, earnest, loyal," in 
school learning rapidly, playing with other children, 
sincerely ambitious to make her life useful and no- 
ble in the fullest degree. The first state, contrary 
to the opinion of her first teacher, was not due to 
mental defect nor to ungovernable passion within 



BAD AND BACKWARD 99 

the child herself but to misdirected energies. The 
new state was brought about by the simple but la- 
borious direction of the same fundamental energies 
into new and useful channels. 

Laziness. — One of the commonest charges 
brought against backward children when the back- 
wardness is so mild that it does not demand serious 
investigation, is the charge of laziness. It is an 
easy mode of explaining hard things. Besides, the 
backward child exhibits so many symptoms of lazi- 
ness. In fact, a lazy boy and a "truly backward" 
boy, if they are not suffering from precisely the 
same fundamental pathological conditions, certainly 
act as if they were. But it is the traditional method 
with children to declare that they are born with de- 
pravity in them and their worth of character comes 
largely, if not wholly, from training. However, 
science in its advances encroaches more and more 
not only upon the realms of superstition but also 
upon the empires of tradition. Many hoary-headed 
opinions concerning children, when examined im- 
partially, melt away like snow under the April sun. 
One of these is the traditional notion that because 
they do not like work or study, healthy, outdoor, 
sun-loving, young barbarians are lazy. The fact 
that the accusation rests chiefly against boys and 
not girls suggests some ground for suspicion that it 
is unjust. 

Modern child-study has done much to explode the 
theory of "just pure laziness" as a cause for a boy's 



100 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

so-called idleness. The youthful, good-for-nothing, 
rat-catching Darwin, who later was amazed at his 
own industry displayed in reading whole masses of 
biological literature; a boy called "Pat," who al- 
ternated fits of extremest laziness with spells of 
hunting without which the orator of the Revolution 
might never have proclaimed to the centuries "Give 
me liberty or give me death"; and a host of others 
have done much to dispel the prophecy that "lazy" 
boys are sure to fail. The lifelong sufferings of 
Horace Mann, due largely to his work-laden boy- 
hood, is a protest against adult-defined diligence as 
the proper virtue for children. Added to these 
admonitions comes Doctor Hutchison with his half- 
jocular toxin-theory of work and his warning 
against infection by the deadly habit of industry, on 
the one hand, and the hook-worm with its genuine 
infection of laziness on the other. Out of this med- 
ley of theories and babel of new voices, for every 
child trainer must come a revision of doctrine con- 
cerning the old simple formula of "He is lazy." 

Possibly laziness in children really exists. H it 
does and is the cause of some pupils' poor progress 
in school, possibly the direct method of the father 
who gave his two boys a sound beating because 
their monthly grades were low, may be effective for 
curing the low grades. The method has in its fa- 
vor at least the simplicity of brutality. H, how- 
ever, it should turn out that all children called lazy 
are in reality suffering from perfectly definite but 



BAD AND BACKWARD 101 

as yet only partially known pathological conditions, 
punishment would appear to be as barbarous as 
beating a sick savage in order to expel the evil 
spirit causing the disease; and if, as is now gen- 
erally believed, a very large majority of cases of so- 
called laziness have their distinct causes, it would 
seem to be only rudimentary justice to study 
each case carefully in order to discover the cause. 
Finally, so-called laziness may turn out to be a 
man's salvation. 

A couple of boys lived on a farm where both were 
compelled to work hard to force a living for the 
family out of the unwilling soil. One boy took to 
the work willingly. He did his chores, "plowed and 
sowed, bought and sold" as his forefathers had done 
with never a vision beyond the mechanical order of 
the day. The other hated the farm work, did as 
little as he could, wotild walk miles to borrow a book 
and then would crawl off in the haymow or some 
other place and pore over it all day. He was slow, 
inactive, dilatory in all manual occupations and re- 
ceived early the opprobrious title of "lazy bones." 
At the first opportunity he left the farm and went 
into the city, secured an office position in a business 
corporation and is to-day an influential officer in that 
organization. His "diligent" brother remained on 
the farm, "diligently" plied his trade with dimin- 
ishing success, but continual labor, till the foreclo- 
sure of a mortgage threatened to alienate the home- 
stead from the family and it was saved only by the 



102 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

"lazy" brother, who bought it in and now hires his 
"diligent" brother to farm it for him. 

Such an instance does not prove that laziness does 
not exist, but it does go to show that laziness should 
be more accurately defined and each suspected case 
carefully diagnosed before summary action is taken. 
A period comes in many a high-school boy's life 
when rapid physical growth saps his energies ; when 
disgust for old things begets tastes for new things ; 
when restlessness drives and doubt guides, and the 
whole life eddies, then stands still and stagnates. Such 
a boy often falls behind in study, is charged with 
gross laziness, and sometimes is driven by extreme 
measures into acts ruinous to his whole life. For 
the lazy boy, young or old, I would make a plea for 
the most discriminating study and the most patient 
treatment. I have heard a successful man in mid- 
dle life devoutly thank God for the profound lazi- 
ness of his youth because it permitted the incubation 
of purposes that changed the direction of his whole 
career. 

All of us know the evil effects of truancy on 
school progress. Few of us know infallibly how to 
cure it. Some of us believe that truants are bom 
and truants are made. The former truants must 
have their fling for a time at least ; must learn the 
bitter truth little Hugh Idle learned who ran away 
from Mr. Toil, his hated schoolmaster, fell in with 
a most congenial traveler along the road, stopped 
with him to admire one interesting activity after 



BAD AND BACKWARD 103 

another always to be frightened half out of his wits 
by seeing one of Mr. Toil's everlasting brothers en- 
ergetically bossing the job. Night came at last, 
and poor Hugh turned to his fellow-traveler with 
the tearful question, "Is there nothing but Toil in 
the world?" to discover to his utter dismay that he 
had been in the company of Toil all day long. That 
is one of the fables in our school readers, one of the 
lessons we do not learn while young, but do learn 
when we are older, by experience and only by ex- 
perience, and then forget that lesson the moment 
we ourselves begin to deal with the faults of chil- 
dren. Verily, I do believe that born-truants must 
have the truancy taken out of them by the long and 
dusty road, by the hardships of ignorance, by the 
labor inevitably involved in fleeing from toil. The 
wise rich father sends his truant son on a long 
voyage with one of his captains; or his son falls 
overboard, as Kipling's hero did, and tastes the bit- 
terness of ignorance upon a fishing-smack. Poor 
men's sons can not always do that and sometimes 
they end tragically because they can not, as the 
sequel to the following story will show. 

A Truant Made. — When I first saw Ikey he 
was in a special summer school, and I did not won- 
der that a teacher had taken the trouble to travel 
half-way across the city to warn the lady in charge 
against the little rogue. She described his ignor- 
ance, his stupidity, his unruliness, his truancy, his 
deceitfulness, his constant aggravation of his men- 



104 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

tal ills by most persistent moral turpitude. She, for 
one, was convinced that he was a moral degenerate 
and mentally unsound, and that further efforts on 
his behalf would be worse than useless because they 
would do no good to Ikey and he would do untold 
harm to the other summer-school pupils. 

And Ikey looked It. He was undersized in body 
and limb; with a queer, little, wizened face, scarred 
by old burns that affected one eye and gave an 
odd and impish quirk to his grin. His hair was cut 
a la Pompadour, and stood up over his low fore- 
head like the spines of a hedgehog. His clothes be- 
tokened his lowly condition; they were ragged and 
dirty; his shoes, old button-shoes, were run down at 
the heel, full of holes and half the buttons were 
gone. He was a typical slum child, a "wharf-rat," 
with all the cunning of the species written in every 
line of his face, every thread of his clothes, in the 
ready poise and In every startled, scuttling move- 
ment of his body. His beady eyes glistened and 
danced, a flat denial to the charge of stupidity. The 
tentative, twisted uncovering of his crooked teeth 
offered either enmity or friendship, and accord- 
ing to the exigencies of the occasion, might turn 
into a snarl or a smile. One could not associate a 
loud, hearty laugh with Ikey. A silent series of 
chuckles is as much as one could expect under the 
most mirthful circumstances. 

Into his home and schooling we need not go. Both 
can better be imagined than described. We can 



BAD AND BACKWARD 105 

begin our admiration for Ikey by noting that neither 
home nor school had broken his spring-steel spirit, 
though between them they had put kinks in it. For- 
tunately for the waif of a city's wreckage, he had 
fallen at last into the hands of Miss F., the same 
teacher who dealt with Joe described in Chapter I. 
She had a habit of looking through the outside of 
teachers and boys and things, and so after glancing 
at the hat of the teacher who pursued Ikey across 
the city, she courteously dismissed the prophet and 
the prophecy of evil and turned to the boy. She 
saw all I have described, and likely she saw more. 
Anyhow, from Ikey's facial contortions emerged 
a confessed smile and his schooling began. 

And now when our story should reach its climax 
of interest in the pedagogical struggle that ought 
to follow, we really have little to say. The battle 
was all won when this kind of a special class was or- 
ganized and a teacher like Miss F. was born. The 
very novelty held the truant for about a week. It 
was all so strange. Class began with all the fifteen 
pupils arranged about the teacher as they do in a 
kindergarten, and then they all told what they 
wanted to do during the day and how they would 
do it. After that each went to the board and wrote 
what he would do; then he read it and had it cor- 
rected ; then he went and did it. The "it" consisted 
of something different for each child and included 
manual work of all kinds; reading, writing, arith- 
metic, games, a lunch with ice-cream, sl nap, a swim. 



106 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

a walk in the park, and a lingering farewell at four 
o'clock. No wonder a boy like poor street-hardened 
Ikey counted it all a paradise, never missed a day, 
rain or shine, though he walked six miles a day, and 
at the end of the summer came to the principal's of- 
fice and begged to be permitted to come back to that 
school next year. He studied, too, and did well for 
him, considering his previous disadvantages. He 
certainly was not an imbecile, neither a degenerate, 
neither an incorrigible, but just a little cobble-stone, 
kicked loose from the streets where travel had worn 
him hard and smooth. At the end of six weeks the 
great city opened its maw and swallowed him again, 
and I have not seen him since. Often I have wanted 
to hear how he turned out and have hoped against 
hope that he did well. At least, it was demon- 
strated that he was a truant made and not a truant 
born. 

A Truant Born. — Bert was a truant born. At 
thirteen he bore about with him the air of a rover 
and the ennui of a man of the world. I met him 
in the same summer-school with Ikey. They were 
altogether different. Bert was large, well-formed, 
easy-mannered, hated to be in a class with "kids" 
and boarded at a place where some of them "cried 
at night to go home !" That to him was the nether- 
most depth of imbecile puerility. He never wanted 
to go home. In fact, for several years he had been 
using every effort to get away from home to go west 
and lead a wild untrammeled life on a ranch. He 



BAD AND BACKWARD 107 

had started on his free-hfe career via truancy, but 
it had ended so far rather humiliatingly. He had 
been sent to a truant school, been in the juvenile 
court, in the detention house, on probation, in a 
protectory, and between times, frequently in the 
hands of the police. Through it all his study nat- 
urally suffered, and at thirteen he was having a new 
trial in a summer class for backward children. 
There he was making a good impression by his lazy 
smile, his drawling tones, his ready ability and un- 
failing politeness. The matron with whom he 
boarded said he had a "good face" and was the 
most "gentlemanly boy she ever saw." When he 
obligingly offered to take a ten-dollar check to the 
store and get it cashed for her she readily signed 
it and telephoned the store to give him the money. 
When Bert was next heard of he was in a sol- 
diers' camp in another state. He had taken the ten 
dollars, equipped himself with a brand new khaki 
uniform, taken a train, passed through the largest 
city in America, changed from train to boat, from 
boat to trolley-car, thence to train again, with the 
unerring scent of a pointer-dog winding a covey of 
partridges, and arrived at the soldiers' camp only 
to find his expected friend was not there. Nothing 
abashed, he soon made friends, was boarded and 
petted, and finally wrote a post-card to his father ad- 
monishing him not to worry. Before the police 
came he was on his way home, and arrived in his 
native city with twenty-five cents, with which, like 



108 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

a true man of the world, he took one last fling at an 
amusement park. Then he reported at the poHce 
station that he was a lost boy and "wouldn't they 
take him home?" Which they did in the patrol- 
wagon, and nothing was lacking in Bert's arrival 
save a band playing "See, the Conquering Hero 
Comes." 

Poor Bert! That was about his last escapade. 
All the threats and punishments could not cure his 
craving for the West. His parents thought they 
could cure it, or, to be more accurate, they did not 
think at all, and following in their poor blind way 
the traditions of society, attempted by paternal au- 
thority and organized social machinery to suppress 
the vagrancy of their unguided boy. But in spite 
of it all, Bert slipped through the meshes, took a 
freight-train for his promised land, fell under the 
wheels and his restless spirit free forever, winged 
away on its last long journey. 

In the face of such tragedy, pedagogy feels the 
propriety of silent reflection. Yet for the sake of 
other parents with other boys, I must add my firm 
conviction that Bert might have been saved and 
cured from his truancy. Purposefully, I have 
brought together Ikey and Bert in order to show 
from the first how the second might have been 
helped, and to show from the second how serious it 
is to attempt to suppress the vagrant impulses of 
boys when they are manifested so persistently and 
so strenuously. I believe that if Bert's parents had 



BAD AND BACKWARD 109 

arranged for him to go west and by the toil and 
sweat of actual cowboy life, to work out of his sys- 
tem the romance and glamour surrounding his no- 
tion of ranch life, he would have come to himself 
and would have returned a chastened and wiser 
youth. He had brains and ability, he was not irra- 
tionally bad, he was not a general vagrant nor 
merely an aimless truant, but he was a boy with a 
fixed obsession, and the lure of that obsession led 
him to his death. If we dare generalize from these 
cases, and others like them, I would say that tru- 
ancy is nearly always due to environment, and if 
taken in time, can be cured by the proper modifica- 
tion of the school conditions. 



CHAPTER VI 

RETARDATION DUE TO ENVIRONMENT 

THE causes of mental retardation are resident 
either within the child himself or outside of 
him. Since the retardation is so often discovered 
in school where the first exact methods of classify- 
ing children are applied, it frequently happens that 
the causes for the retardation are looked for in the 
school. Parents say the curriculum is too crowded 
or too difficult, the lessons too long, the text-books 
incomprehensible, the teacher unfit, the method of 
teaching outworn or experimental. It is seldom 
that the school-administrator has a chance to make 
an adequate reply and so the charges stand. 

The fact is that causes for retardation very often 
lie in the child's home, or in his neighborhood, or 
in the kinds of companions he keeps. Sometimes 
the causes are physical; sometimes they are due to 
the ideals he imbibes. 

Because of their exceeding triviality, the causes 
are frequently overlooked. So serious does peda- 
gogical retardation appear to the average school- 
administrator that he is misled into thinking that a 
serious cause must surely lie at the bottom of so 

110 



ENVIRONMENT 111 

serious a condition. He therefore looks for deep- 
seated defects in the pupil's physical or mental being, 
or for sinister influences in his surroundings, when, 
as a matter of fact, frequently the cause is so trivial 
and superficial that he overlooks it. Causes that 
are ludicrous except for the gravity of their effect, 
and too ridiculous to be set down except for their 
frequency, will readily occur to any seasoned 
teacher. Partly to warn teachers, in cases of re- 
tardation, to look first for the obvious, and partly 
to warn parents about the effects of their careless 
and thoughtless criticisms of school on their chil- 
dren, I will set down a few cases that have come 
under my notice. 

A boy ten years old fell behind his classes so per- 
sistently that the principal of his school, after look- 
ing in vain for causes adequate to account for his 
seeming utter indifference to study, and after ex- 
hausting every pedagogical device to interest him in 
things mundane, sent him to a clinic. There a care- 
ful examination was made, and though the boy was 
found to be but of ordinary mentality, he seemed 
to possess enough mind to succeed moderately if 
he would only apply himself. There were no rad- 
ical physical defects in the way of this, either; no 
cause appeared but his sublime indifference to study 
or to any other preparation for life. The reason for 
this attitude was discovered when he was asked 
what he was going to be when he grew up and 
blandly answered, "Nothing; for the world is com- 



112 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

Ing to an end in 1917, and there Isn't any use of get- 
ting ready to do anything." Then it transpired 
that the boy belonged to a family who held a mil- 
lennium doctrine that looked confidently for the 
near destruction of this world. The boy heard it, be- 
lieved it, applied it literally to his own case and re- 
fused to make any preparation whatever for his 
future here. He knew that the sect to which his 
parents belonged was misunderstood and criticized, 
and hence he kept his doctrines to himself until the 
seriousness of his retardation led him to a clinic 
where he blurted out his confession. Needless to 
say, his parents had had no intention of permitting 
their theological doctrines to make such an impres- 
sion upon their son and took immediate steps to 
correct it. 

Another case is so utterly ridiculous that only its 
cogency as an illustration of how almost unthinkably 
trivial causes will affect children's attitude toward 
studies, and its actual occurrence in a large city of 
the Middle West justifies its restatement. A little 
girl, apparently from a very poor and very ignorant 
foreign family, did well in all her studies except 
geography. Finally, in despair, the teacher sent for 
Mary's mother, who duly appeared, an uncultured 
ignorant woman, belligerent and not over-refined in 
her manner or ideals of life. She heard the teach- 
er's complaint to the end and then almost dazed that 
good spinster-lady by remarking with the utmost 
complacency that geography was patently utterly fu- 



ENVIRONMENT 113 

tile, since she herself without it had contrived to con- 
summate a woman's supreme ambition in life by se- 
curing a husband, while the teacher, with it, had 
failed ! No wonder that Mary despised geography ! 
It is a compliment to the versatility of the American 
school-teacher to add that this one quickly recov- 
ered herself, led Mary's mother into further con- 
versation, accepted an invitation to visit their home 
and meet the prize husband, who turned out to be 
very anxious for his daughter to become a school- 
teacher because she would earn a large salary. With 
that as her cue, the teacher led Mary and her father 
to see the more certain and more immediate value 
of geography as an asset to teaching, while she 
pleased the mother by assuring her that it was not 
an obstacle to the ultimate vocation of matrimony. 
Other instances, some more serious and some 
more ridiculous, illustrating the undesirable effects 
of home ideals on pupil's progress in school will 
readily come to mind. The American boy's hope- 
lessness in grammar caused by his father's grandiose 
assertion that a free-born American did not have 
to be taught his native tongue; the failure of an- 
other in drawing because his commercial parents 
despised "artists"; the collapse of a girl under a 
certain teacher because the girl's mother and the 
teacher crossed swords In some social affair; all 
these could be developed at length to teach the same 
lesson of home influences upon the backwardness of 
some pupils in certain or all of their studies. 



114 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

Home influences are not limited to inculcation of 
ideas. Some of them are physical, definite in their 
nature, and serious in their effects. The common- 
est of these causes are sanitary and nutritional. 
What and how a child eats; how many hours, and 
under what conditions he sleeps, how much fresh 
air he has at his command, any or all of these items 
of his daily regime bear heavily on his mental de- 
velopment and often make or mar his educational 
course. Being physical, and therefore not always 
appreciated as having direct mental bearings, being 
distant from the schoolroom, and, therefore, not 
easily observable, and being confined to the home, 
and hence intensely difficult to amend, such causes 
are the hardest of all to deal with effectively. It is 
a great help for a teacher in any particular case to 
know that home conditions are at the bottom of the 
matter. It enables her to put the blame where it 
belongs and not to put it where it does not belong. 
The following case illustrates how blame may be 
misplaced : 

Sarah was a girl about nine who came to school 
every morning and regularly put her head down on 
her arms on her desk and for half an hour refused 
to do anything whatsoever. Punishment succeeded 
in developing only a spell of stubborn sullenness, 
and coaxing was of no avail. If she was left en- 
tirely undisturbed, Sarah seemed to fall into a half 
stupor from which she aroused herself gradually 
and with effort and assumed little by little the duties 



ENVIRONMENT 115 

of the day. She was always more dull and stupid 
than the normal children, but behaved well and 
seemed to try to learn though she suffered from a 
number of physical defects. 

Finally, through the social service department of 
a clinic, her home was investigated. It consisted of 
two rooms in a tenement located in the crowded sec- 
tion of a large eastern city. In those two rooms a 
family of nine persons, father, mother and seven 
children, ate, slept and lived. How they did it the 
dwellers in the slums only know. They had no reg- 
ular bedtime nor meal-times. They went to bed and 
rose as fancy or the demands of their work dictated. 
On the table was always a loaf of bread and per- 
haps some bologna sausage, and on the stove a pot 
of black coffee or tea. In winter windows were 
kept closed to save fuel and the conditions of such 
a sleeping place can only be imagined. From a night 
in such quarters, Sarah rose, dressed, seized a hasty 
bite of bread and meat, swallowed some coffee, if 
there was any, and hurried off to school. There 
outraged nature asserted itself and the worn-out 
nervous system racked all night by city noises, dis- 
turbances, poisoned air and over-crowded quarters, 
seized the opportunity in this comparative repose 
and fell into a kind of stupor. 

What this single illustration teaches might be en- 
forced by literally thousands of examples, for thou- 
sands of backward children among the six million 
pedagogically retarded ones, suffer from lack of 



116 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

food, improper food and poor housing. However, 
the converse, that all poorly fed and poorly housed 
children are backward, is not true; though in all 
probability there is a close connection between the 
two. That coffee-drinking has something to do with 
low grades in conduct and studies is indicated by 
Mr. C. K. Taylor's statements concerning four hun- 
dred and sixty-four pupils. The general average 
for conduct for those not drinking coffee was sev- 
enty-five and six-tenths per cent., while for all of 
those drinking it was seventy-three per cent. Those 
who drank four cups a day averaged only sixty- 
seven and eight-tenths per cent. In their grades a 
similar result was found. For the month in which 
the test was made, the non-coffee-drinkers averaged 
seventy-three and fourth-tenths per cent., and the 
drinkers seventy and eight-tenths per cent. Those 
drinking four cups a day averaged only sixty-three 
and eight-tenths per cent. Other conditions not 
conducive to study may have entered into the total 
situation, but with these figures before us, it hardly 
seems possible to treat coffee-drinking by children 
as a matter of indift'erence. Yet the habit is most 
common. Doctor Chapin reported that out of two 
hundred and sixty-two New York school children, 
ninety-three per cent, had tea or coffee every day, 
and forty per cent, twice a day. Investigations 
made in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Bos- 
ton, St. Paul, and other large cities go to show; 



ENVIRONMENT 117 

that about ten per cent, of the school children are 
seriously underfed. This comes from several con- 
ditions. Some children do not have enough pro- 
vided at home. Gathered from many sources sta- 
tistics indicate that about fifty or sixty per cent, 
of city school children do not have enough break- 
fast, and possibly eight to ten per cent, have no 
breakfast. Some of these go home for lunch, but 
many either buy penny lunches or do without eating 
at noon. In Philadelphia it is estimated that school 
children spend one hundred and seventy thousand 
dollars annually away from home for lunches. John 
Spargo noted that in New York City the girls and 
boys bought lunches chiefly composed of pickles, 
ice-cream, candy, bananas, bread, bologna and 
pickled fish. Some of the boys preferred to gam- 
ble with their pennies to spending them for such 
lunches, and it is a nice question to determine which 
was worse on their morals. 

How much such articles of diet affect children's 
studies has never been ascertained. That they do 
affect them materially for the worse goes without 
saying. It seems impossible that brains taking one- 
eighth of the blood in the human body could work 
well when supplied with an arterial circulation which 
must be affected by ferments and toxins generated 
from disproportionate amounts of acids and sweets 
like ice-cream and chocolates. Education working 
on the masses is the only cure in sight for these 



118 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

conditions. The school-lunch movements not only 
alleviate present conditions but educate for the fu- 
ture. 

A common cause of retardation is the influence of 
companions. This potent determiner of a pupil's 
studiousness reveals itself most prominently in col- 
lege life. When he leaves home for college there 
to take his life in his own hands, probably to live 
in a fraternity house where every item of his 
daily conduct is intimately acted and reacted on by 
other youths, the overpowering importance of com- 
pany comes out. Many a college student has been 
made or marred by his college companions. Many 
a one has been saved by the simple expedient of 
changing his lodging or boarding-house and so fall- 
ing in with a totally new group of men. 

This tendency to conform to the ideals of the 
group, or to the "gang spirit," expressed so prom- 
inently in college, is also present in boys of pri- 
mary-school age. With them home influence usually 
holds it in check. Sometimes, however, the home 
fails and the boy suffers in his studies, not because 
he is naturally bad morally or mentally, but because 
of untoward or unfair conditions. Any one can 
feel this truth in the following story : 

Allan was a boy born across the water while his 
father, for business reasons, was in America, where 
one cause after another kept the father until his boy 
was ten years old. Allan did not feel the loss of all 
those ties that go to make fathers dear to their 



ENVIRONMENT 119 

boys and boys dear to their fathers. He had never 
known them, and besides, his mother and his grand- 
parents made up much that his father could not give. 
So he grew and played, and went to a private school, 
and was petted and cared for by all his relatives 
more than he would have been had his father been 
at home. He was shielded from all dangers, spent 
much time with grown people and received and re- 
turned a boundless affection for those about him 
and withal, was as happy as a healthy red-cheeked 
boy could be. 

Then, to him quite suddenly, his mother and he 
left all the joys he had known so long, and came to 
America to join the father. The change for Allan 
can well be imagined. From a country town he 
came to live in a large city, from fields and woods 
and rivers, to an apartment house ; from a quiet pri- 
vate school, to a hurly-burly American public school. 

His father was strange to him and he was strange 
to his father. His mother tried to make it up to him 
and managed to do so until the care of Allan's sis- 
ter took her time. Then came the sorest trial of 
this little boy's life. 

For nearly a year he had done fairly well in his 
studies, as well as could be expected for a pupil 
with such a totally new curriculum. Then he be- 
gan gradually to fall behind his class. All his school- 
work suffered about the same decline. At first the 
teachers thought it might be temporary, but the 
lagging continued. The immediate cause of it ap- 



120 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

peared in his indifference to his studies and his lack 
of attention. His teachers noticed that and won- 
dered at it because he had always before been so in- 
terested and eager in his strange shy way. Along 
with his inattentiveness and backwardness had come 
a deep and more subtle change of general attitude. 
He was not so shy nor uncertain. He had acquired 
a certain self-confidence. He listened to admoni- 
tions about study with an air of superiority as if he 
had found something better. His parents noticed 
the same kind of change and still others with it. He 
did not spend his evenings at home, but lived them 
on the streets in spite of warnings and finally pun- 
ishments, neither of which did any good. His de- 
terioration was rapid. In a few months he had 
changed from one of the most docile to one of the 
most unprofitable boys in school, irregular, tardy, 
indifferent, bored; speedily falling into the class of 
hopeless retardants. Yet nothing appeared on the 
surface to account for this distressing change. 

His condition became so bad and the causes so 
baffling that he was taken to a clinic for special ex- 
amination. Nothing was found in his physical or 
mental condition that would explain his miscon- 
duct or his pedagogical retardation. A social 
worker was sent to his home where the above de- 
scribed home conditions were found to exist. Then 
she went to the school and watched Allan on the 
playground. His companions were a revelation. 
Instead of associating with neatly dressed boys of 



ENVIRONMENT 121 

his own social standing, she found He was the 
hanger-on of a group of ragamuffins most of whom 
were older than he was, and most of whom were 
also retarded in their schooling and therefore were 
still in that school of primary grades. To these boys 
Allan was a treasure. He brought them cakes, fruit, 
candies and money he had been browbeaten into 
taking from home. So pitiably simple-minded was 
he that he gloried in his membership in the gang 
and rejoiced in the comradeship of these fellows and 
his apparent importance in their eyes. To the so- 
cial worker the whole cruel situation came with the 
force of a child- world tragedy. The lonesome lit- 
tle foreigner had never played much with boys; 
they were strange to him and their games stranger 
still. At school he was an outcast; at home neg- 
lected. At the lowest ebb of his spirits when he was 
ready to make friends with anybody, he fell in with 
this gang of idlers, who welcomed him as a new 
source of diversion and exploitation, and speedily 
impregnated his simple mind with ideals all at vari- 
ance with obedience, study and honesty. Who could 
blame this homesick, lonely boy if he accepted the 
superior wisdom of these older boys and fell a ready 
victim to their advice and their practises? He felt 
in every particular like the country boy who plunges 
for the first time into city life and grows an abnor- 
mal sophistication which pities the simplicity of his 
country home. 

Once the cause of Allan's degenerative course was 



122 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

found out, it was not hard to reverse it. First, his 
father was given a word or two of advice about 
paternal duties and the superior efficacy of well- 
regulated amusements and evenings at home over 
the too ready resort to the rod. Next, the teach- 
er's help was enlisted and pains were taken to see 
that the stranger took lessons in American citizen- 
ship by learning American games. The effect was 
immediate and the final effect most satisfactory. 
Allan regained his normal spirits, returned again to 
the study of his school-books, and at last accounts 
was as proud of his new baseball and bat as any 
young American. 

An instance of retardation and moral delinquency 
of aggravated form is the following. A boy of 
twelve years, from a most excellent family, of fine 
physical appearance, and apparently of more than 
usual intellectual ability, fell steadily behind in his 
school-work until he was two years behind his class. 
His father was dead, and on account of certain cir- 
cumstances, his mother was compelled to give much 
of her attention to her own father's business. As 
a result, this boy, Rupert, was left more to his own 
resources and with less supervision than he would 
have had with a father and a mother who could 
give him the usual care bestowed on growing boys. 
He lived in a beautiful suburb of an eastern city, 
where the fine physical appointments and the high 
social positions of the largest part of its residents 
gave an added sense of security to the parents of 



ENVIRONMENT 123 

sons. But there, as everywhere, the upper classes 
had their complement of lower classes, and among 
the latter Rupert found his companions. 

How his association with them began is not 
clearly known. It seemed to date from the visit 
of a cheap circus to the town. Rupert, like all 
healthy youngsters, in the nomadic period of his 
life, was wild about the show, its animals, its per- 
formers and its fascinating free life. During the 
three days it remained, he spent all the time he 
could down among the tents, was delighted when 
permitted to carry water for the horses, or to do any 
other menial task he was asked to do; associated 
with the circus hangers-on, and met and mingled 
freely with a class of boys, black and white, whom 
he had seen before but had instinctively avoided. 
Their common liking for the circus, its life and its 
spirit, was a strong bond between Rupert and his 
new-found friends. He entered into their life with 
the zest of boyish enthusiasm and the fascination 
of a novel experience. 

After the circus left, the boy continued his close 
and daily contact with the same gang of boys. 
Gradually he fell into their ways of doing, and 
what was not so obvious, but even more serious, 
into their ways of thinking. He became a part of 
them, a leader in some respects; fawned upon by 
them for his superior talents, better clothes and 
ready supply of money. Inevitably the first pranks 
degenerated into acts of hoodlumism, and then into 



124 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

petty thieving until the latter practise became quite 
serious, and included the purloining of large sums 
from home. Parallel with the moral delinquency- 
went intellectual deterioration and neglect of study 
until Rupert fell far behind his class. The whole 
process continued over a period of three years. 
Punishments were of no avail to compel him to 
study nor to separate him from his gang. Finally, 
so serious did his infatuation for his comrades be- 
come and so detrimental to his mental life was the 
effect that he was taken to a clinic for a mental 
examination. 

No physical marks of abnormality, no special 
mental defects beyond general pedagogical retarda- 
tion, and no moral deviations beyond those incident 
to a bad environment appeared. To observe the boy 
still further, he was placed for a month or more in a 
special class where no abnormalities developed, and 
where Rupert showed himself to be amenable to 
discipline and capable of study. No special peda- 
gogical devices were necessary to secure from him 
fair work and considerable improvement. The ex- 
periment in the new surroundings was considered 
a sufficient demonstration of the cause of his re- 
tardation and he was entered in a very good board- 
ing-school. 

There among new surroundings his improve- 
ment continued, and at last report he was making 
good progress, had readily adjusted himself to his 
new environment and was part and parcel of the 



ENVIRONMENT 125 

new group, entering into the games and ideals of 
the students as if he never had been afflicted with 
an almost ruinous and abnormal predilection for a 
street-gang of low order. His face and his bearing 
betoken a boy of more than usual nobility in char- 
acter and breeding. His temporary aberration was 
due to the power of ideals grafted on his mind by the 
crowd of boys among whom he inadvertently fell. 

The Conversion of a Gang. — These two cases 
illustrate what can be done by removing boys from 
the influence of the gang. Sometimes this is not 
possible and the teacher is squarely faced with the 
project of converting the gang for the sake of its 
retarded members. I am not aware that the gang 
has been very widely studied from this point of 
view, nor that its value as a pedagogical asset has 
been thoroughly explored. The following two in- 
stances may indicate how the gang may be con- 
verted and its members saved to the school, first, 
by individual efforts, and second, by organized 
efforts. 

In a country town, a group of boys In the upper 
grades had gradually crystallized into a gang of 
young vandals, full of mischief, given over to night- 
prowling and day-loafing, to indolence in school and 
rebellion against study. Among them it was counted 
smart to be ignorant and big to neglect openly all 
school tasks. When any pupil through desire, 
shame or fear, attempted to get his lessons, he 
was greeted with sneers and jeers, called "the 



126 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

teacher's pet," and threatened with ostracism from 
the group. As the town was small and the boys 
of thirteen to fifteen or sixteen were not many, as the 
swimming hole, baseball field, woods and streams 
were common property, it meant much to the one 
made an outcast by his diligence. The condition was 
called to the teacher's attention by declining grades 
and by increasing retardation of certain boys. All 
the usual methods of stimulation were tried and 
failed. The situation was becoming daily more 
serious in the school, had attracted attention out- 
side, and as usual led to a suggestion for a new 
teacher. 

At that point the principal took matters in hand. 
He began by studying the situation indoors and 
outdoors. He soon discovered the outlines of the 
gang and noted that the line of demarcation be- 
tween the gang and the good students was the 
same. His first appearance on the playground was 
made one day at recess when this particular group 
of destructive imps was bombarding the maple 
trees with stones from the graveled walks. There 
was a pause in the throwing, a pretense of picking 
up more stones to throw, a bravado attempt on the 
part of the boys to look unconcerned. The prin- 
cipal took in the situation, and in a half querulous 
tone, remarked, "Why don't you boys set up that 
old tin pail and see who can hit it at ten paces?" 
Partly to cover an embarrassing situation the 



ENVIRONMENT 127 

boys set up the pail and started in to throw per- 
functorily. The principal kept the score, the in- 
terest warmed up, and by the time recess ended, 
the gang was hot in the midst of a contest of throw- 
ing, the pail was nearly annihilated, and the prin- 
cipal was one of the gang. 

The principal followed up his initiation by spend- 
ing recesses and noon-hours on the playground. He 
introduced, organized and inspired games. He 
showed that brains won "prisoners' base," and he 
developed generals and generalship as it was never 
known in that pastime before. He permitted the 
boys and girls to play together and so infused a 
spirit of chivalry into the contests. He played ball, 
coached the pitchers and showed himself to be an 
all-round man. He won their respect and admira- 
tion on the playground and, before they knew it, 
they found themselves transferring the glow of the 
games to the lessons of the schoolroom and there 
desiring the same warm approbation from their 
principal that he gave so generously to athletic 
ability. 

It was not long before Saturdays and Sundays 
were utilized. The teacher organized hikes, as 
they would be called now, taught his boys to camp 
and cook, to see curious things in nature, to study 
geography in open fields, and history in landmarks. 
Gradually the original nucleus expanded until other 
boys who formerly did not belong to the gang, were 



128 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

introduced; and being good scholars, and being 
found also to be good fellows, they leavened the 
whole lump with new ideals. 

It was not all done in a day nor so smoothly as 
I have hinted. There were periods of suspense and 
crises. The great crisis came in a blacksmith shop. 
It happened that the ringleader of the gang was a 
big husky son of the town blacksmith, a man of 
natural force and some influence, but little educa- 
tion. He had rather gloried in his son's leadership 
against study and listened readily to boys' criticisms 
of the principal's new tactics, acquiescing in the 
suspicions and growing sentiment that "A teacher 
ought to tend to his business and spend his time 
in study instead of running all over the country 
with a pack of boys." None of this was lost on 
the principal who dropped around to the blacksmith 
shop one day to cultivate the old man. It happened 
that they were welding steel wagon tires, a heavy 
laborious job requiring strength, alertness and skill. 
The temporary helper who swung the sledge was 
a half useless fellow who was too slow and usually 
wrong. The smith was in a black sullen humor, 
and the teacher paused at the door in silence, seeing 
no propitious opening and not knowing what to do, 
until the exasperating stupidity of the helper car- 
ried him back to his father's blacksmith shop, and 
his own days at wielding the sledge. Then before 
he knew what he was doing, when the tire melting 
hot came off the forge, he sprang forward, seized 



- ENVIRONMENT 129 

the great hammer and with a perfect rain of clean- 
cut blows, the smith and he welded up the neatest 
joint of the day. The victory over the gang was 
won right there. What the old man said or did 
to his boy is not recorded, but thereafter Pete, the 
leader of the gang, became the teacher's stanchest 
supporter, though through insufficient brains he 
could never become a brilliant student. 

Organizing the Gang-Spirit for Study. — Of 
course, we know that every one can not swing a 
sledge and that a blacksmith shop is not the place 
for a lady principal, but common sense may glean 
enough principles from the above procedure to en- 
able a wise teacher to deal with an unruly crowd. 
The next scene is laid in the city and gives general 
account of an organized effort to control and direct 
the gang spirit to study. 

Mickey Hogan was short and stocky, older than 
he looked, red-headed and freckled as his name de- 
manded, and as Hibernian as Irish ancestors and 
American birth could make him. He was lord of 
the streets in his neighborhood, a terror to good- 
doers among his schoolmates, a retarded pupil by 
choice, not by necessity, and leader of a self-per- 
petuating gang in the school where he went. The 
gang had long been the despair of the teachers. 
That part of the city was little enough conducive 
to study as it was and retardation was so rife that 
no artificial stimulation was needed to make it 
thrive. But the gang did stimulate ideals altogether 



130 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

opposed to intellectual ideals and Mickey was their 
prophet. 

One day an event occurred in his school. He, 
with some other boys of his age, was called into a 
room and there met a strange man with scales, 
measuring-rods, calipers and other curious instru- 
ments. Mickey, true to his cult, viewed the pro- 
ceedings with the superciliousness of a boy inured 
to the new education, but with trembling in his 
heart, and a rebellion near to the surface. The 
man began to put the boys through some measure- 
ments and to make comments. His manner was 
pleasant and businesslike, and since no extra study 
appeared to be involved in the process which seemed 
to be concerned with muscles and breathing-power, 
Mickey got interested in the measurements of biceps 
and in the tin can for measuring lung-power, that 
raised up like a gas tank when one blew through 
the rubber tube. He was eager for his turn and 
swelled his biceps and squared his shoulders and 
drew himself up to his full stocky height. When 
he came to the lung-power machine, he made up 
his mind to blow it out at the top, but was surprised 
to find how soon the rising reservoir stopped. Try 
as he would, he could not muster another breath 
and the indicator showed he blew less than a boy 
with a clean face, whom Mickey despised. 

"Try again," said the man good-naturedly, and 
Mickey took a long breath and emptied his lungs 
into the tube. It was no use. The indicator would 



ENVIRONMENT 131 

stop at about one hundred and seventy-five cubic 
inches. 

Then the man slipped a tape-line around his chest 
under his arms and measured Mickey's chest ex- 
pansion. It was suspiciously small. "Too many 
cigarettes, my boy," said the man in a perfectly 
matter-of-fact voice, "you're cutting into your 
wind. You've got a mighty fine build but you 
won't last at the pace you are going." Mickey was 
both delighted and frightened. He was proud to 
be considered "tough," but he did not like to think 
it interfered with his health and strength. He was 
sensitive about his short stature and had always 
taken comfort in his sturdiness. To have it demon- 
strated by an apparatus that could not lie, and re- 
marked on casually by a man who did not care, 
placed the judgment beyond dispute. 

Mickey listened very attentively to the rest of the 
man's scheme. It was simple enough. At the end 
of another six months all the boys were to be meas- 
ured again. The boy who showed the greatest 
all-round physical development would have his pic- 
ture framed and hung up in the schoolhouse hall 
for all the boys to see and admire. Frequent talks 
would be given by experts telling the boys how to 
grow strong. To gain strength meant regular hours, 
plenty of sleep, plain food, without coffee, tea, much 
candy, ice-cream or soda-water, and positively no 
cigarettes or tobacco. It was rather a stiff program 
for some of the boys and especially Mickey, but he 



132 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

took a big breath and resolved to try it. It was a 
good thing that he did not then know all the details 
of the struggle. For the next six months he fought 
his battles grimly. His eye was single for the 
physical prize, but his teachers soon noted an im- 
provement in his studies. The reasons for that 
were many. The chief ones were his improved 
health, which in boyhood follows rapidly any better- 
ment in hygiene, and the fact that he stayed at home 
nights to keep out of temptation and having nothing 
else to do, he studied. What was happening to 
Mickey was happening in a more or less degree to 
his followers. All of them were not so determined 
as he, but they were still following their leader in 
this new quest for physical might. As a result 
their attitude changed from indifference to any- 
thing good to intense interest in one good thing 
and to subsidiary interests in many other things. 
Their studies and conduct improved with the build- 
ing of their bodies. The talks on hygiene were 
constantly stimulating. Clubs were organized by 
university students, and trips were taken to parks 
and to the outlying country; exercises were given; 
deep breathing was practised daily; colored button- 
badges were distributed as marks of honor, and the 
old gang spirit was captured, tamed and harnessed 
to works of good instead of evil. 

The six months were up at last and Mr. Taylor, 
the organizer of the movement, now an old friend 
to the boys, reappeared with his scales, tapes and 



ENVIRONMENT 133 

calipers, and amid many a nervous jest and jibe, 
the boys went through their tests. Mickey won. 
He ought to have won. Nobody had been more 
faithful to the daily exercises than he. He had 
commanded the admiration of his teachers, too, 
for his sturdy adherence to study and his advance 
in school work. Not only had his influence per- 
meated his crowd with new zeal for intellectual 
things, but he had interested his hard-working 
father, a man seemingly infinitely removed from 
school affairs, but who himself had had athletic 
aspirations in his young days. When Mickey an- 
nounced that he had won and would have his pic- 
ture taken, his father was so delighted that forth- 
with he took his son to a store and bought him a pair 
of tights with green plush trunks, and in that cos- 
tume, Mickey, with his arms proudly folded, with 
his knuckles under his biceps, was photographed 
and his picture hangs in his school to-day. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE BACKWARD CHILD IN THE HOME 

WHAT Star was in the ascendant when Jer- 
rold was born is a question. Surely he was 
lucky to pass from the blankness of nothingness 
into a mansion where every tenderness and luxury 
waited for him. Unlucky he was in the journey, 
for one leg and one arm were paralyzed. It was 
bad enough in itself for him to enter life maimed, 
but his ailment made matters worse. It was aston- 
ishing how many hard things in life that helpless 
arm and leg were able to ward off. Not a task 
was Jerrold ever permitted to perform for himself. 
From birth through babyhood nurses and eiderdown 
were his alternatives. Servants tended him day 
and night, washed him, fed him, dressed him and 
kept him helpless all through a pampered childhood, 
marked not by stages of achievement, but merely 
by the passage of empty years. When he was seven 
he was still a baby; when he was fourteen, he was 
a child of seven. His body grew; he learned to 
walk by dragging one foot; he could not use one 
hand; everything that medical science knew had 
been done for him, but he was a cripple. 

At about fourteen, after money had done every- 

134 



IN THE HOME 135 

thing for him except the essential, he drifted into 
a boarding-school. It is hard to believe that a boy 
from such a home could be in such a state. At first 
glance his personal appearance betokened pure im- 
becility. His face wore the vacuous look of an im- 
becile ; his lips hung ajar, and he drooled saliva like a 
baby; his clothes were of excellent material but worn 
slovenly; his left hand was held closed to his side, 
as useless as the claw of a fiddler-crab; the toe of 
his left foot dragged on the ground as he walked, 
or hopped about in his ludicrous efforts to play. 
Jo all appearances he was a slouching, helpless, 
grinning simpleton. 

He could not do anything. No royal imbecile 
>vas ever more helpless. He had never washed his 
face and hands, combed his hair, dressed himself, 
tied a shoe-string or neck-tie, buttoned a but- 
ton, nor taken a bath unassisted, in all his life. 
Servants had done it all. They had followed him 
about, taking his orders, enduring his high temper 
and childish abuse, waiting on him hand and foot, 
bringing to him what he required and picking up 
what he threw down. He ate like a savage, grab- 
bing his food in his hand and thrusting it into his 
mouth till it was stuffed full, and then champing 
it like a dog. An extreme case, you say. It was, 
but a true one in all essentials. His extremity is 
what makes it valuable, as the end will show. 

At school, for the first time in his life, Jerrold 
fell among boys. They began his training. Since 



136 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

his table manners were so bad, he was given a small 
table in the corner of a room and a young man ate 
with him. He was compelled, on pain of missing 
dessert, to eat with a knife and fork, to chew his 
food and otherwise to act rationally. Next, he 
was taught to take a bath under a shower by com- 
pulsion, during which the back of a hair-brush 
wielded by students aided his circulation and sus- 
tained his perseverance in the operation. His hands, 
which were black with grime, were scrubbed with 
a scrubbing-brush and a repetition of that vigorous 
method promised unless he kept them reasonably 
clean. His dressing was taken in hand and he was 
compelled to put on his clothes and to button but- 
tons. His shoe-strings were laced and tied for him 
once and then he was shown how he could unhook 
and hook them without untying or tying them. 
His teeth and his hair were turned over to his care, 
and he soon learned to take pride in keeping his hair 
smooth and his teeth white. 

In the meantime his outdoor life was not neg- 
lected. He began at the school to play with boys 
half his age; but he was shamed out of that and 
introduced to sports more fitting to his years. His 
fellow-students were patient and good-natured 
here and he did his best. They undertook to 
straighten his arm and fingers, invented a brace 
for his arm, exercised and massaged his fingers 
into strength and motion, pulled his arm straight 
and put muscle on it. Jerrold responded nobly to 



IN THE HOME 137 

all that. He wanted to be big and strong. He 
worshiped the big center on the football team 
and. would obey him with canine docility. In a 
couple of years he grew by eating, bathing and ex- 
ercising into a robust boy. His features changed, 
his mouth closed, his arm gained its powers, his 
hand its cunning, and he walked, still with the 
slightest limp, but with his foot fiat on the heel 
and toe. 

His studies showed similar improvement. He 
always had brains but in some respects they had 
never been developed beyond their baby stage. 
Travel and association, stories read and told him, 
had filled his mind with much that was good. His 
environment had shielded him from evil. His 
tutors had given him the rudiments. With his 
adolescent mental awakening had come the greatest 
increase in his physical powers. The whole 
exhilaration of the period, natural and artificial, 
literally and visibly, made of him a new being. 
Instead of an imbecile, he was a well-dressed, intelli- 
gent, cultured young man; still bearing obscure 
scars and lingering vestiges of his backwardness, 
but on the whole so nearly normal that he visited 
a college class composed of teachers and students 
of abnormal children, entered the room, sat through 
the lecture, came forward and was introduced to 
the professor, all before the eyes of the thirty 
students, none of whom noticed anything unusual 
in his appearance or conduct. 



138 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

This case is valuable for illustrating many points. 
Three of them I want to note especially. First, 
Jerrold's home was, from the popular point of 
view, all that could be desired. Not a material com- 
fort was lacking. The boy had everything but 
training. Second, lacking that, he was unfitted for 
all higher education. He had not laid the founda- 
tions for any kind of study. He had formed no 
habits of daily routine, and acquired no habits of 
study. Third, as a consequence, not only his 
body, but his mind was undeveloped. This should 
be especially remembered because it is not always 
clearly understood that mental development begins 
in the home and comes through such self-help activ- 
ities as dressing, bathing and eating. 

Diagnosis. — Backwardness in a child is often 
noticed first in the home. With fond fatuity the 
parents seek to hide the true seriousness of the 
matter from themselves, or they comfort themselves 
with the formula, "He will outgrow it." Both pol- 
icies are wrong. As soon as mental retardation is 
suspected, a diagnosis ought to be made by a spe- 
cialist. This insistence admits of no exceptions. 
No cost in time, trouble and money is too great to 
obtain it. Any parent who delays for any reason 
whatsoever is risking the mental life of the child. 
None but a specialist in mental retardation of chil- 
dren is fitted to make it. When a trustworthy 
diagnosis is made by a specialist the treatment and 



IN THE HOME 139 

training of the child can proceed with the assur- 
ance that results will be achieved. 

The Home Training. — The training should be- 
gin in the cradle. Habits of sleeping, eating and 
bathing can be developed by an inviolable and im- 
placable order that will lay the foundation for 
that obedience which is the first essential and al- 
ways indispensable condition of all training. If 
there is a time in a child's life when insistence on 
a mechanical system and a blind obedience is proper 
it is during infancy, when the child's acts are 
chiefly if not wholly reflexive and instinctive, and 
consciousness has not reached that acute state where 
self-will and ideas of justice enter in. Indeed, I 
am willing to go the length of summing up the aim 
and method of training the child from birth to his 
school-age in this: The formation of habits by 
repetition of self-help activities. 

Right habits, then, imbedded in the reflex nervous 
system of the baby by an unfaltering and undevlat- 
ing practise of right habits by parents, lay the foun- 
dation for all future training. The next part, the 
ground floor of the character-edifice, is self-help. 
This again is a fundamental and lifelong lesson. 
A child must learn to dress himself. I put that first 
because it Is to his interest to dress in order to get 
out-of-doors. If he has been habituated in baby- 
hood to prompt and expeditious dressing from other 
hands, he will try to dress himself without delay. 



140 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

If he is normal, he will succeed with very little 
teaching; if he is backward, he will require definite 
instruction with all patience and repeated trials. 
Remember, too, that such training is also "mental 
development"; it is "education"; is necessary, fun- 
damental and indispensable to all "higher" acquisi- 
tion. This truth is revealed by a single glance at 
the Montessori apparatus with its shoe-strings, but- 
tons and button-holes. Following the dressing, eat- 
ing can be taken up. A child must eat and it is 
comparatively easy to bring natural rewards and 
punishments to bear on him. If he will not eat 
properly he can be deprived of certain sweetmeats, 
desserts or luxuries. Because dressing and eating 
carry with them the motives for their performance" 
I have placed them first in the category of lessons 
to be learned. Washing the face and hands is not 
necessary. Often it is a severe trial, especially with 
boys. Therefore, it is hard to get a child to do it. 

Method of Home Training. — I have a feeling 
that the emphasis on methods of child-training is 
overdone. It seems to me that in all this self-help-, 
the only method of learning to do is by doing. If 
a child is to learn to lace his shoes, he must lace 
his shoes. Let him do it himself and be not over 
particular how he does it. If he is to put on his 
trousers who cares which leg goes in first? If he 
is to dress, whether his waist, or his stockings go 
first? The whole process has a definite beginning 
and an end. That is the educational beauty of it. 



IN THE HOME 141 

The hard part is to get the unwilling child to begin, 
to proceed and to finish. To do that, no new method 
which will dispense with parental good-humor, pa- 
tience and firmness, has been, or will likely ever 
be invented. 

The place where method comes in is in the 
method of proceeding. Generally speaking, all 
manual lessons should begin with large movements 
first and gradually proceed to smaller and more de- 
tailed ones. Dressing is a suitable exercise except 
the buttons, shoe-strings, and hair-ribbons. Use 
of knives and forks is hard for all little people. 
Washing one's hands and face is not an act difficult 
to perform and bathing is easy ; but face-washing is 
difficult to teach because boys do not take to it 
naturally. Because the ideal training can not be 
found in self-help it must be supplemented with 
other activities. 

The supplementary activities should be play. For 
the young child under six years of age chores are 
impossible. He should engage in all forms of out- 
door play that involve the large movements of run- 
ning, jumping, rolling on the grass or ground, 
climbing, hobby-horse riding, swinging, throwing, 
playing in sand, and all other games of childhood. 
The busy mother can not adequately direct the play 
of her children and she need not worry about it. 
One thing she must do : Let them play. If they 
are well, they will play. Even a retarded child will 
play if he has companions of his own capacity. If 



142 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

no children are available a puppy dog is the next 
best substitute. Playing with grown people alone 
generally has a bad effect on children. The gap 
between their abilities is too great. Emulation dis- 
appears and parasitism develops. In general, then, 
see that the backward child plays with children, 
toys or animals that compel him to do his part. 

The Teacher in the Home. — Finally, we come 
to the teacher in the home. That problem seems 
easy to dismiss with that solution of all children's 
problems, that bearer of all their burdens : Mother. 
But is mother the teacher? Does not a child have 
two parents and often grandmothers, and older 
sisters, and sometimes aunts who are school- 
teachers ? And do not all of these persons lend their 
conscious and unconscious influence to the training 
of the child? So important is it that one and only 
one person should have charge of a child that many 
of the best child specialists will not attempt to teach 
any backward child in the home. We can not, 
then, expect great results from a mother's training 
if that is interfered with by any others in the home. 
Still, the mother is the natural trainer and should 
assume full charge of her child's pre-school educa- 
tion. She may not be the best teacher in the world, 
but it is better for all concerned if she becomes at 
least the head-teacher. 

A Case of Too Much Teacher. — Mercer was 
born when his sister was sixteen years of age and 



IN THE HOME 14:^ 

thought she knew the same amount about training 
children that the average young lady of that age 
thinks she knows plus the amount a girl studying 
to be a teacher thinks she knows. Therefore, she 
early took her brother's education in hand. She 
did not succeed in giving him much book-learning 
before he was six because his father and mother, 
both middle-aged, thought he need not be bothered 
about such matters until he went to school. When 
he started to school, therefore, the reign of sister 
Clara, now aged twenty-two, really began. It was 
a stormy reign. Father and mother kept their hands 
off the lessons and Mercer found liberty to fight his 
battles alone. Usually the evening lesson which 
began so happily in the lamplight of the family 
circle ended in a domestic storm, with Mercer re- 
bellious, father skeptical, mother resigned and 
Clara indignant. She said Mercer was stupid and 
backed her assertion with the testimony of his 
teachers who said he had learned practically nothing 
out of books the six months he was in school. 

After the evening lesson, Mercer and his father 
adjourned to the cellar where they had a workshop 
full of lovely things. At six years Mercer could 
assemble parts of electric apparatus, arranging 
cells, wires, coils and bells so they would ring; 
could attach an incandescent lamp; could start the 
gas engine and operate it; and could handle tools 
very well for his age and slight build. His father, 



144 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

who was a machinist, thought he was the smartest 
boy on earth. 

Mercer never played much with other children. 
He had Hved with grown people all his life. That 
is why the neighbors said he was beyond his years. 
His mother and sister never let him go outdoors 
out of their sight. Sometimes, while they sat on 
the porch, they let him take his little wagon out 
on the sidewalk and play with other boys. But 
if a quarrel arose and one of the youngsters slapped 
him, instead of fighting like a boy, Mercer ran 
bawling to the sheltering arms of his mother or 
sister. H he played alone and his automiobile wagon 
upset the same lachrymal demonstration followed. 
No wonder, then, that the boys called him a baby. 

The teachers said he was backward; the neigh- 
bors said he was beyond his years; the boys said 
he was a baby ; Binet tests said he was a year above 
his age; the father said he was smart; the sister 
said he was stupid; the mother folded her hands, 
shook her head resignedly and said nothing. The 
probable truth of the matter was that Mercer was 
naturally bright, considerably spoiled, retarded in 
some matters, advanced in others, taught by his 
father one way, by his sister another, in school 
another, and on the whole, directed by nobody. He 
followed his own interests and in the conflict of 
teachers managed to have his own way. He needed 
one and only one good teacher and that should have 
been his mother. 



IN THE HOME 145 

Treatments. — Treatments for backwardness 
are general or constitutional, and particular or spe- 
cific. In the first class the treatments affect the 
whole body and in the second they are applied to 
particular organs for specific diseases. The latter 
treatments may be subdivided into surgical and med- 
ical. A constitutional treatment aims to build up the 
whole system by outdoor life, by plenty of fresh air, 
good food, sleep and play. What these will do in 
some cases of backwardness caused by neglect or 
ill treatment almost reaches the marvelous. It will 
be practically impossible in much of this discussion 
to keep treatment and training separate; nor is it 
necessary or desirable to separate them. They 
merge naturally into cause and effect without ef- 
fort on the part of the parent. Take this case as an 
example. 

Cyrene was six years old when she was carried 
to a clinic in the arms of a nurse. She could 
neither walk nor talk, but crept about the floor and 
babbled like an infant. She had been picked up in 
the slums by a charity worker. Her home was a 
room in a tenement. Her mother had to work 
daily. Cyrene stayed at home much of the time by 
herself and was often under the influence of drugs. 
Neglect, dirt, starvation, accidents, soporific drugs, 
disease inherited and acquired, had all done their 
part to stunt the mind of this child almost com- 
pletely and her body very materially. 

She was taken out of her home and placed in a 



146 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

sanatorium at the seashore for six weeks. There 
she was given for the first time in her life the care 
and the nourishment fit for a human being. The 
treatment she received was not exceptional and 
peculiar treatment, but just such treatment as any- 
modern institution would give. She was bathed 
daily, dressed in clean clothes, slept long hours in 
a bed white and sweet as soap and water, sunshine 
and sea-air could make it; played all day on a 
veranda or out in the sea sand; and ate plenty of 
good, plain, wholesome, well-cooked food. In short 
she lived the entirely healthful life of a young 
animal. 

In six weeks, what a change ! I do not know 
how many pounds she gained in weight, nor how 
many inches she grew in height. Neither of those 
additions was the wonderful part. The change in 
her mental development without one single con- 
scious effort at special training by her nurses, was 
the marvel. She learned to walk and to talk, not 
indeed as well as a normal six-year-old, but won- 
derfully well for one so recently an infant. She 
seemed to have grown three years in a few weeks 
and since that time has continued to improve though 
not so rapidly. 

Cyrene's advance throws into bold relief what 
is called constitutional treatment. It shows both 
by their presence and their absence what large and 
important factors in mental growth are the com- 
mon daily necessities of life. For her condition, 



IN THE HOME 147 

while remarkable because it is unusual, is not there- 
fore an exception to the effect of hygienic living 
on children in general. Her experience only iso- 
lates and therefore presents vividly and clearly the 
factors of physical and mental growth usually hid- 
den like the pressure of the atmosphere, by their 
well-nigh universal presence. 

Diets for Children. — Backward children do 
not usually require a diet different from that of 
other children. However, as many of them suffer 
from insufficient and improper eating, it seems well 
to make a few notes on this little understood sub- 
ject. For convenience, we will treat home- feeding 
and school- feeding together. Preparing food and 
eating can be made as highly educational for the 
mind as beneficial for the body. Buying, cooking, 
setting the table, eating, washing dishes, cleaning 
the teeth, — ^how many and how varied are the les- 
sons grouped about this most ancient, necessary and 
civilizing process of food-getting! Arithmetic, 
chemistry, physics, physiology, anatomy, hygiene, 
ethics, sociology, geography, economics, all these 
so abstract subjects are directly connected with 
plain cooking and refined eating; while reading, 
writing, spelling, grammar, poetry and art may be 
introduced without much effort. Worship has been 
connected with all its processes from times imme- 
morial. To get food is the chief struggle of nearly 
ninety per cent, of all Americans and to secure the 
dearest food the ideal of nearly all. Out of such 



148 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

an animal struggle and such a sensuous ideal come 
so much of the greed, the passions and the crimes 
of our civilization. Food, healthy and healthful, 
fair-priced and sufficient, well-cooked and well-di- 
gested is the solution of many problems within the 
schoolroom, the home and the great world outside. 
Foods, all foods, yield energy. They strengthen 
muscles and they heat the body. They furnish the 
fire and steam to the human machine, and do some- 
thing else no man-made machine ever dreams of 
doing, namely, they repair the machine itself. 
Though all yield energy, some foods are especially 
repairing or tissue-building agents. These are 
called proteins and make up chiefly the white of 
eggs, the curds of milk, lean meat, parts of wheat, 
etc. Another group compose the well-known faf 
family, found in fat-meat, butter, olive oil, nuts, 
corn, wheat, etc. Fat, as everybody knows, is 
stored in the body for warmth and energy. It does 
not build tissues like bones and muscles. Another 
energy-giving food are the carbohydrates, like 
sugar, starch, etc. They are changed into fats in 
the body. These three, proteins, fats and carbo- 
hydrates are the great foods of the body by which 
it lives, moves and has its being. From the food 
purchased in the market it selects by its own mys- 
terious processes chiefly these three ingredients and 
rejects most of the rest. So when the housewife 
buys a lobster with its shell, its water, its mineral 
matter, and Its protein, fat and carbohydrates, in 



IN THE HOME 149 

the last three ingredients the body uses only about 
one-sixteenth of the whole lobster and about fifteen- 
sixteenths is thrown away in shell and water. Lob- 
sters are not only dear in first cost, but terribly dear 
in last cost. When a man pays a dollar and a half 
a pound for one alive he really pays one dollar and 
a half an ounce, or twenty-four dollars a pound for 
the lobster he really gets. Again we see that all 
food is not food; and to find how much food a 
child ought to have we must figure on actual, or 
available food. 

To find out how much a girl or boy ought to 
eat daily we make comparisons with a man doing 
moderate muscular work which is similar in effect 
to the play of an ordinary child. The standard of 
measurement for tissue building is the weight of 
protein consumed daily, and for energy-giving food 
the amount of heat the food will develop measured 
by the calory. The calory is the amount of heat re- 
quired to raise the temperature of one kilogram of 
water one degree centigrade; or one pound of water 
four degrees Fahrenheit nearly; or, if the heat 
should be turned into mechanical power, one calory 
would raise one ton nearly one and fifty- four hun- 
dredths feet. 

As a rough average diet for a child we can take 
the amounts suitable for a child of ten years and 
vary the diet by increasing the amounts for other 
children up to fourteen years, but not beyond, and 
diminishing them for children down to seven years, 



150 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

thus covering those of school age. The average 
daily ration for a ten-year-old weighing twenty- 
eight kilograms (about sixty pounds) lies, in round 
numbers, between three hundred to three hundred 
fifty grams* of actual or available food after waste 
is deducted, made up as follows : proteids, sixty 
grams; carbohydrates, two hundred fifty grams; 
and fats, forty-five grams; giving altogether about 
sixteen hundred calories of fuel or heat value. A 
little later we will show how the calories are cal- 
culated from the weight. 

For more accurate measurements we may con- 
struct a simple table as follows using as a standard 
the daily rations needed by a man doing moderate 
muscular work who requires about twenty- four hun- 
dredths pounds of protein and about three thousand 
fifty calories of heat besides. 

Calories (Car- 
Protein bohydrates 
Person Percent. (Lbs.) and fats) 

Man at moderate muscular 

work 100 0.24 3050 

Boy 15 to 16 years 90 0.22 2745 

^?y }^ J° }4 y^^^M 80 0.19 2440 

Girl 15 to 16 years ) 

gS IU0T4 years ! '» "l^ 2155 

Sa J2 lo I2 JeS I ^ »•" l^O 

Child 6 to 9 years 50 0.12 1525 

Child 2 to 5 years 40 0.96 1220 

Child under 2 years 30 0.72 915 

*One gram, metric system, equals 15.432 grains avoirdupois 
weight. One kilogram equals 2.2 pounds nearly. 



IN THE HOME 151 

After the question as to how much a child should 
eat daily comes the question of what he shall eat. 
First let us show the method of answering* that for 
individuals; then for a typical class. A child of 
known age should be weighed and measured, two 
operations easily performed by anybody, and his 
blood tested by a physician. Then his diet should 
be arranged to suit his needs. H he is thin, carbo- 
hydrates and fats should dominate in his rations. 
If he is fat and flabby, proteins should dominate. 
The typical dietary given above for a ten-year-old 
body may be used for an average and deviations 
from it arranged. For calculating the calories 
from the weights the following table may be used. 

TABLE II 

Substance Calories per gram Calories per pound 

Protein 4 1820 

Carbohydrates 4 1820 

Fats 9 4040 

For classes the procedure is the same for each 
individual. Then instead of fitting a ration to each 
child an average dietary is made up for the whole 
class. To illustrate we will use an actual special 
class in a summer school. One meal a day was 
given and, since it was the noonday meal it was 
calculated to furnish one-half the required daily 
food. As the weather was warm the menus were 
fitted to that condition, and ice-cream appears daily, 



152 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

both for its cooling effects and its allurement to 
pupils inclined to play truant especially from a 
school held during regular vacation time. Ten 
menus were arranged and used through twenty- 
seven days for nineteen children as given below. 



Materials for each child Proteid Fat Carbohydrate 

for each meal (grams) (grams) (grams) Calories 

1. Bread and milk, double 

portion, ice-cream .... 31.16 37.00 117.04 769.00 

2. Bread, roast beef, milk, 

ice-cream ..._. 32.4 45.38 73.12 774.00 

3. Jam sandwich, rice, 

milk, ice-cream 26.38 36.95 149.29 885.00 

4. Hamburg steak, rice, 
bread and butter, milk, 

ice-cream 35.16 46.13 118.74 951.00 

5. Macaroni and cheese, 
bread and butter, milk, 

ice-cream 30.51 65.05 117.31 1019.00 

6. Shredded wheat with 
sugar and milk, bread 
and butter, prunes and 

ice-cream 20.85 37.32 147.26 904.00 

7. Lettuce sandwich, with 
dressing, bread and 
butter, milk and ice- 
cream 23.17 37.60 105.47 745.00 

8. Scrambled eggs and ba- 
con, bread and butter, 

milk and ice-cream.... 31.79 72.72 74.08 866.26 

9. Creamed beef, bread 
and butter, milk and 

ice-cream 33.64 50.67 78.48 798.00 

10. Creamed beef, baked 
potato, bread and but- 
ter, milk and ice-cream 36.33 50.76 100.51 897.00 
Total average per portion : proteid, 28 ; fat, 45 ; carbohy- 
drate, 115; calories, 881. 

It will be noted that the fat is very high, that the 
average per portion is equal to the total standard 
daily portion. The fat is mostly derived from 



IN THE HOME 153 

milk and butter, which is the most wholesome form 
for children. The children whose home diet was 
most lacking in fat were watched carefully and it 
was seen that they got more butter than the others. 
Several learned to eat butter for the first time. 
Again, the values given above took no account of 
waste. They are based on the assumption that all 
of the food served was eaten every day which, of 
course, was not strictly true, a fair amount being 
lost in changing from platter to plate. 

Surgical Treatment for Particular Diseases. — 
Surgical operations are so clearly procedures of 
medical men, so technical in character and so remote 
from the accomplishments of ordinary people that 
it seems almost a waste of time to consider them 
here. Yet everybody recognizes instantly what a 
close connection the parent has with the inception 
of surgical operations on children. The surgeon 
can not. take the initiative. Patients must be 
brought to him. Here again, as in medical cases, 
an early operation may save untold trouble. Ad- 
enoids, enlarged tonsils, earache and toothache 
have such a direct bearing on a child's behavior 
that the parent often discovers these defects first. 
If parents understood the same matters much of 
their prejudice would also disappear. It seems ap- 
propriate, therefore, to touch very briefly and pop- 
ularly on a few of the commoner anatomical ills 
of backward children where operations may help 
the permanently backward and very frequently cure 



154 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

the temporarily backward. As adenoids are com- 
mon we will begin with them. 

Though adenoids are absorbed during ad- 
olescence, by that time all the mischief has been done 
and the marks remain for life or must be removed 
by long and tedious treatment. Therefore re- 
moval of adenoids is counseled by nearly all ex- 
perts. This becomes imperative when the following 
symptoms appear : 

1. Open mouth, especially during sleep, teeth 
coming crooked, disturbed sleep, irritable humor, 
lack of attention, nasal voice, flat-chest and constant 
lassitude. 

2. Continual colds, nasal discharge, tendency to 
sore throats, tonsilitis and bronchitis. 

3. Earache and partial deafness or hard-hearing. 

4. Nervous symptoms like bed-wetting, stam- 
mering, St. Vitus' dance, headaches, night-terrors, 
etc. 

The Teeth. — Dental defects are many and va- 
rious. Tartar is the commonest, decaying teeth the 
next, and crooked teeth the next. From one or 
all of these troubles, according to an estimate based 
on an investigation of New York City schools, 
half the pupils in America, or nine million little 
souls, suffer the agony of horses under the whip 
pulling with raw shoulders against a collar hard as 
iron. Happily for both children and horses, hu- 
manitarians have already cared for the horses and 
are diligently considering the children. Many of 



IN THE HOME 155 

the later dental evils come from the neglect of the 
apparently harmless though disfiguring tartar. The 
true nature of this insidious growth is seen when it 
is known that tartar is a bacterial growth, a weed- 
patch in a child's mouth which generally sends with 
every swallow of food millions of its off-scourings 
into the child's stomach. In that congenial soil they 
thrive, multiply rapidly and devour the food in- 
tended for the tissues of the child's body. Un- 
willingly he has become the host of an innumerable 
company of insolent guests who devour his dainties, 
leaving him only the scraps at the second table. 
Tartar, any tartar, is therefore serious and espe- 
cially the kind that sometimes clings closely around 
the gums of even the most fastidious tooth- wash- 
ers, and gradually drives back the gums until the 
teeth loosen in their sockets. Tartar, too, is a fore- 
runner of decay, another germ disease worse in its 
malnutritional effect than simple tartar, and infi- 
nitely more painful and deterring to any application 
of the mind. Happily that olden-time, well-known 
institution, the puffed cheek, the sobbing child, 
his handkerchief pressed to his aching jaw, the 
consoling mother and the sympathizing group of 
playmates, has almost disappeared from child-life 
like the lost art of patching, or else lingers only in 
out-of-the-way country places. Or, at least, it ought 
to be; for no longer in a land of dentists is tooth- 
ache a visitation of Providence to be subdued with 
hartshorn or laudanum. Yet it is said that only a 



156 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

few years ago, in a school largely attended by for- 
eign children, some were discovered with many 
teeth missing, a few with only three teeth left, and 
one or two with no teeth left'. 

All decayed teeth should be filled, if possible; or 
drawn, if the dentist advises it. Likewise impacted 
teeth due to the second teeth's coming in and press- 
ing upon the roots of the first set, should receive 
immediate attention as they lead to the most aggra- 
vated forms of mischief and sometimes to moral 
delinquency. Crooked teeth, and indeed the whole 
jaw, can be straightened. Such work should be 
done as early as possible after the permanent teeth 
are cut; for the younger the child the more easily 
and quickly the jaws change their shape. This form 
of surgery is bloodless and though irritating and pos- 
sibly painful, it is infinitely less so than years of the 
inconvenience, poor mastication, bad articulation and 
ugliness occasioned by a mouth full of ill-shaped, in- 
human-looking teeth only partially hidden by an 
equally repulsive mouth. Because of such easily 
corrected deformities what unexplainable acts and 
habits of behavior must be attributed to the irrita- 
tion and embarrassment suffered by adolescent boys 
and girls only an omniscient judgment day will re- 
veal. Certainly, besides probable mental and moral 
qualities, a good, strong, clean, white, accurately 
adjusted set of teeth adds much to the physical 
health, appearance and tone of any person. In this 



IN THE HOME 157 

day of dentists and tooth-brushes every child should 
have good teeth. 

Other bad companions come trooping in with ad- 
enoids. Of course, enlarged tonsils are common ac- 
companiments. They are located on each side of the 
throat, and can be seen from the inside when the 
mouth is open. Located more remotely from en- 
larged tonsils and adenoids, yet frequently accom- 
panying them, is earache, forming with toothache, 
the twin-terrors of childish days and nights. The 
pathological relation between adenoids and earache 
is visibly seen in the eustachian tube, a small canal 
running from the throat, through which the germs, 
already having found a prolific soil in the fevered 
over-blooded throat, are forced to another spot Ideal 
for colonizing in the middle-ear. Spraying the throat 
with salt-water or weak germicides and consequent 
coughing or violently blowing the nose assists the 
germs in the passage to their safe seclusion in the 
middle chamber of the ear, where no antiseptic can 
reach them until they have perforated the drum- 
head, or tympanum, and a running ear relieves the 
intense pain of the preceding prosperous growth of 
the germs known to sufferers as earache. If the 
earache is recurrent and is permitted to proceed un- 
restricted or is aided by home-made applications, the 
hearing may be entirely and permanently destroyed. 
So serious is it that earache should always have the 
prompt attention of a specialist. 



158 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

Arising alike in the home and schoolroom is the 
problem of home-treatment and professional treat- 
ment of physical ailments. At home it expresses 
itself in, "Shall we send for the doctor?"* and in 
school, "Shall we send him to the medical in- 
spector?" The answer obviously depends on the 
nature of the ailment; and the discovery of that 
on the parent's ability to distinguish simple and 
unimportant affections from serious ones. How 
much of this skill can be and should be imparted to 
laymen may be a question ; but assuredly those who 
are charged with the welfare of little people ought 
at least to know the characteristic symptoms of 
common contagious diseases. 

Colds, for example, are either simple ailments or 
the forerunners of serious diseases. H a cold is 
accompanied with continually weeping eyes, a per- 
sistent avoidance of light, it likely presages measles; 
if accompanied with extremely high fever, hard dry 
cough and soreness all over the body, it means 
grippe; if a sudden discharge in thick bloody shreds 
appears from the nose, dread diphtheria is indicated. 
H the cold is accompanied by a paroxysmal cough 
rising to a whoop, the signal is almost certain for 
whooping-cough. Colds and coughs also accompany 
adenoids. In general any persistent cold, or habitual 
colds and coughs are danger-signals and should call 
for investigation and treatment. 

* For a simple treatment of this whole subject see When to 
Send for the Doctor, Lippert & Holmes, Lippincott Company, 
Philadelphia, Pa. 



IN THE HOME 159 

Sore throats are common and may mean much 
or little. A highly inflamed throat with patches 
is not necessarily dangerous. H vomiting comes 
on with high fever, scarlet fever is signalized. 
Swollen glands in the neck behind the jaw and a 
gray white "film" inside the throat mean diphtheria, 
n the tonsils are swollen and studded over with nu- 
merous yellow spots tonsilitis is coming on. If the 
tonsils are very red and large, so large it is diffi- 
cult to open the mouth, quinsy must be suspected. 

Headaches are always serious because they inter- 
fere with a child's study and because they are symp- 
toms of other perhaps dangerous conditions in the 
child's body or his environment. Any teacher can 
discover these causes by observation, questioning, 
and experimenting with foods, ventilation, light, 
play and naps in school. 

Investigations in one school system showed that 
children with skin diseases were more often back- 
ward than those with poor eyesight. Hence, the 
discovery and treatment of skin affections impinges 
closely on scholastic duties. One hundred years 
ago all skin diseases were supposed to come from 
"bad blood." Now we know that many are due 
to germs securing entrance through the pores of 
the skin. If skin eruptions come in the form of 
small red pimples tending to run together, growing 
moist and itching intensely, eczema is the disease. 
If the irritation is confined to the head, suspect 
head lice. If it comes between the fingers or toes, 



160 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

and if a brown-black, zigzag line from an eighth to 
a half inch long appears, send the child away im- 
mediately before it communicates the itch to others. 
Ringworm, another contagious skin trouble, is early 
known by the circular direction of the eruption. 
Scaling of the skin may mean simple dandruff, if 
from the hair, or eczema, or the result of measles, 
or of scarlet fever. The last is especially dangerous. 
Chicken-pox usually comes on without much warn- 
ing. The small, rose-colored pimples turn to blis- 
ters in four hours' time, so the disease, a very con- 
tagious one, develops often under the teacher's 
eyes. Pinkeye is hardly a skin disease, but reddens 
and swells the eyelids and colors the eyeball a 
pinkish red. It runs through a school like wildfire, 
and like all the other contagious diseases, should be 
detected as early as possible and the sufferers sent 
immediately to the school doctor. These most com- 
mon diseases will serve to illustrate the need and 
kind of knowledge teachers and parents should have 
to protect their children from contagion and useless 
suffering. 

Beyond these suggestive treatments it does not 
seem necessary to go. The treatment of earache 
and adjustment of eye-glasses are so common and 
the procedure so well known that they do not require 
special consideration. From this discussion it is 
hoped that the teacher and parent will derive the 
general principle that commands all persons con- 
cerned with children never to attribute their back- 



IN THE HOME 161 

wardness or badness to wilfulness, but always in 
the most persistent, aggravated and aggravating 
cases, to believe in and to search unremittingly for 
some physical defect in the child or outside of 
him. If that, when found, is removable, the child 
can be cured. If not, he can not be cured. In 
either case it is not his fault. And here, for the 
sake of millions of misunderstood children I must 
yield to the temptation and set down this universal 
negative: No child is ever a bad or a backward 
child through his own fault. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE CLINICAL DIAGNOSIS OF BACKWARD CHILDREN 

IN all the previous chapters of this book we have 
proceeded inductively in the study of backward 
children. We have brought forward concrete cases 
to illustrate types and to show how these children 
were diagnosed and treated. The cases are taken 
from the common experience of the schoolroom 
and the home and were chosen because of their 
striking features which would command attention, 
and which would set forth underlying principles 
and in such relief that they could be grasped and 
applied to other similar but milder cases of the same 
types. Statistical studies, tables, means and aver- 
ages, on which all true and exhaustive scientific 
studies of such matters must ultimately rest, might 
have been given. For parents and teachers, how- 
ever, the ultimate is not a statistical table, but the 
real individual; not an average, but a human being 
to be saved; not a method applying on the whole, 
but a definite process to be used once, and only 
once, to be rejected if it fails, and discarded when 
it succeeds. Of necessity, such a treatment of the 
subject did not permit the erection of a close and 

162 



OTHE CLINICAL DIAGNOSIS; 163 

carefully articulated system of etiology, diagnosis, 
classification, treatment and training. It is there in 
germ, but is merely suggested and appears through 
the illustrations. We will now turn to a more 
detailed description of the clinical diagnosis. 

The Process as a Whole. — The process of 
diagnosing backward children begins with casual, 
crude and rough approximations made by un- 
skilled observers, and moves on toward sys- 
tematic, precise, scientific measurements made by 
experts. No one should be confused by the fact 
that several organizations and many subordinate 
processes are described. At bottom, from the casual 
opinion of neighbors to the seasoned judgment of 
an expert, all of them rest on the problem of the 
child's social fitness or unfitness. Can he ever 
support himself by his own efforts in society at 
large? is the fundamental question. It is involved 
in the definition of feeble-mindedness, and for the 
teacher and for others responsible for the unfor- 
tunate, it is the question paramount. If by any 
means he can be made self-supporting, though he 
may never read or write, then he has the same 
right to schooling as any other child who is fitted 
in public school for citizenship. If he never can 
become self-supporting in society at large, then all 
his years of public school learning are futile, a 
waste and worse than a waste, robbing him of his 
opportunities to develop his manual and industrial 
faculties for life in an institution and stealing time 



164" BACKWARD CHILDREN 

from normal children who will become self-sup- 
porting. Social fitness is the one requisite; and in 
judging this qualification the observations and 
opinions of common people and especially the tacit 
attitude of the child's peers on the playground, 
have more weight than would at first appear to one 
who thinks this matter wholly an academic and 
technical one. 

This can also be seen from the definition of feeble- 
mindedness. The Royal College of Physicians 
of London define it as "a state of mental de- 
fect from birth, or from an early age, due to in- 
complete cerebral development, in consequence of 
which the person affected is unable to perform his 
duties as a member of society in the position of life 
to which he is born." It will be noted that there 
is a mental defect and that it is incurable, and that 
it is marked enough to prevent the sufferer from 
making his living in ordinary society. These two 
items mark the essentials of amentia, or feeble-mind- 
edness. 

Let us now take a bird's-eye view of our whole 
problem. Here he is before us — a backward boy. 
That much we know by the judgment of parents, 
neighbors, friends and school grading. Let us say 
he is ten years old and in the second grade. What is 
our task? First, we must diagnose our case. Sec- 
ond, we must apply the proper treatment. That is, 
to put the matter in pedagogical terms, we must 
find out what kind of backward boy we have and 



THE" CLINICAL DIAGNOSIS 165 

then we must develop him to his fullest capacity. 
More specifically we must first and fundamentally 
determine whether he is temporarily backward and 
will under right training catch up with his fellows 
in the race of life, or whether he is permanently 
backward and can grow only so far in his mental ca- 
pacity and then will stop. 

What We Measure in Classifying Backward 
Children. — Those two words "mental capacity" 
need a little more consideration. They bring up the 
problem of just what we are trying to determine. 
Is it the child's present intellectual attainments, his 
knowledge of reading, writing and arithmetic? Not 
primarily. Sometimes he is too young to do any of 
these and yet is backward. Anyhow the school ex- 
aminations would settle that. Is it his present men- 
tal capacity — his ability to learn reading, writing 
and arithmetic? Binet says it is, but immediately 
recognizes the fact that such a quality is changeable 
from year to year and hence can not in itself give a 
final basis for calling any child permanently re- 
tarded. Neither can it furnish a basis for a pro- 
longed course of training. No, the quality we are 
seeking to measure in this ten-year-old boy is neither 
present intellectual attainments in themselves and 
by themselves ; nor present mental capacities in them- 
selves and by themselves. It is something far more 
difficult and subtle, requiring not only skill and fine 
judgment in the examiner, but also the gift of 
prophecy based on long and wide experience. ^Ve 



166 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

are seeking something analogous to the latent forces 
residing in an acorn. We are trying to analyze the 
acorn, to determine its powers, real and potential, 
and to predict, if it is placed in a suitable soil in a 
salubrious climate, what kind of oak it will be when 
full-grown. That is what we are trying to deter- 
mine in our ten-year-old backward boy; not alone 
how backward he is, not alone his reading, writ- 
ing and mathematics, not alone his present physical 
and mental powers but his present potentialities. 
Not "What is he now?" but "What will he be at 
puberty when all his mental faculties have reached 
their maturity?" is the primal and unwavering ques- 
tion we must keep before our minds. All we do and 
all we ask must unfalteringly be directed toward 
that one moment. Nor should any favorable or 
unfavorable item swerve our judgment unduly from 
its goal. The degree of backwardness, for example, 
must not betray us into a hasty judgment. Here on 
the table is a baby, unable to walk or talk, cooing ex- 
citably over some blocks, so young psychically that 
she is not free from the baby grasping-reflex and 
will close her hand involuntarily over my fingers 
placed in her palms. Though she screams to seize 
the blocks before her eyes she can not overcome the 
instinct to close her fingers and so holds on tightly 
and keeps on screaming. She is psychically less 
than a year old; yet she is past her sixth birthday. 
Is she permanently retarded? Specialists hesitated 
to say so and hesitated a year after she was under 



THE CLINICAL DIAGNOSIS 167 

their close observation. In six weeks she learned 
to walk and to talk and her progress has remained 
rapid. What will she be at thirteen or fourteen? 
Such a case is exceptional and I cite it to bring out 
the point. On the other hand, here is a low-grade 
idiot ten years old. The prognosis or prophecy is 
easy. Still another boy is fifteen, past puberty, and 
his attainments under the best conditions are those 
of a middle-grade imbecile. Again the diagnosis 
is easy. No prediction is involved. He is now what 
he always will be. His potentialities have all become 
actualized. He is a middle-grade imbecile. 

The Oral Examination. — The services of a 
technically trained expert are not required to make 
the preliminary survey or oral examination of the 
case. It consists of a series of observations, and a 
series of questions and answers. The questions 
should seek to uncover the causes of backwardness 
first, by covering the child's pedagogical history; 
secondly, his life history, giving an account of his 
present social capacities like play and work; of his 
individual capacities like self-help; of his moral 
character; of his diseases, past and present; and 
of his infancy and of his birth-conditions. This 
leads naturally to the third item, his family history 
dwelling on the mental and nervous diseases of 
his parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, brothers, 
sisters and cousins. The last item is always im- 
portant and sometimes decisive in its testimony as 
to the temporariness or permanency of the back- 



16$ BACKWARD CHILDREN 

wardness under discussion. How much feeble-mind- 
edness is caused by birth conditions and by circum- 
stances in life, is a question of grave doubt. All 
writers admit that the proportion is small. 

Heredity. — When we turn to heredity proper 
much of the doubtfulness affecting the other two 
stages of causes vanishes. The supreme fact that 
permanent backwardness is chiefly due to mental 
defects of parents seems to be established beyond 
doubt and continual researches tend to raise the per- 
centages of cases caused by them. The per- 
centages vary from about sixty-six and two-thirds 
per cent, to one hundred per cent. That is, some 
authors suggest that two-thirds at least of all 
the feeble-mindedness in the world could be elim- 
inated in a few generations by proper public 
sentiment and sufficient legislation adequately en- 
forced to prevent the propagation of the mentally 
unfit. Some few insist that nearly all of it would 
disappear. Out of thirty-five medical men ex- 
amined in England by the Royal Commission of 
1904, twenty-five asserted their belief that feeble- 
mindedness was almost, if not wholly a hereditary 
disease. The other ten who placed environment be- 
fore heredity as a casual factor had had very much 
less opportunity to study the facts. Modern bio- 
logical theories tend more and more to confirm the 
opinion of the twenty-five experts. A few scientists 
insist that feeble-minded people are a distinct variety 
of the human species, and if they were left to them- 



THE CLINICAL DIAGNOSIS 169 

selves to propagate their kind, would develop a 
separate race of imbeciles. All of this evidence 
tends strongly to the belief that amentia is wholly 
hereditary and that no diseases, wounds or accidents 
happening to the individual in his lifetime, at birth, 
or later, can make an imbecile out of a child with 
a normal brain. This, however, is a disputed point 
which may be ultimately insolvable. For, grant- 
ing that certain diseases like cerebral meningitis 
will inevitably leave a mark upon the mind of the 
afflicted child as ineradicable as the scar tissue on 
the cortex, still it can be plausibly argued that this 
germ disease would never have arisen had not the 
brain been natively weak and, therefore, susceptible 
to the attacks of the disease. Much support is given 
to this theory by the fact that the sequelae, or evil 
results, of scarlet fever and other illnesses, may 
leave the special nervous end-organs like eyes and 
ears permanently affected and yet not be able to 
mar the strong central brain. Examples of such 
cases will readily occur to all, Laura Bridgman, 
and later Helen Keller, are brilliant ones. Malnutri- 
tion and marasmus may be urged as causes of feeble- 
mindedness arising after birth. Here again the 
same kind of counter-argument can be used and sup- 
ported to some extent with some degree of force by 
the general assertion that the healthy brain always 
demands its toll of sustenance even at the expense 
of all other organs in the human body; that when 
men die of starvation all their organs except the 



170 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

brain perish from want. The brain, like the mon- 
arch of a kingdom, demands its tax from all the 
rest. It starves last. 

The Physical Examination. — After the inquiry; 
into the personal and family history comes the phys- 
ical examination. While it must be made in part at 
least by a regular physician, it need not be a medical 
diagnosis. It is safest merely to note symptoms 
or suspicions of symptoms to be fully studied later 
by a specialist. The examination consists, first, of 
a full description of the personal appearance of the 
child ; secondly, his principal measurements ; thirdly, 
his chest-expansion, grip of his hands, and his power 
"to resist fatigue ; fourthly, the acuteness of his spe- 
cial senses, especially sight and hearing. This 
makes up the first part of the examination which 
any clinicist can give. The second part is the med- 
ical examination, and should be performed by a 
regularly licensed physician. It includes tests of the 
heart, lungs, throat and nose, stomach, intestines, 
liver, kidneys, genito-urinary organs, and a search 
for any constitutional or nervous diseases. The 
purpose of this whole examination is twofold; it is 
made to discover two classes of physical defects. 
The first are removable and hence are associated 
with and are signs of temporary retardation. The 
second are inborn, are not removable and are signs 
of permanent retardation. 

Can the teacher learn by the physical marks alone 
to distinguish temporary backwardness from per- 



THE CLINICAL DIAGNOSIS 171 

manent backwardness? In some low grades of im- 
becility and in all grades of idiocy, yes. In the 
grades of moronity, or light feeble-mindedness, no. 
The marks on the bodies of these high-grade classes 
are no more numerous nor prominent than with nor- 
mal persons. Recently a daily paper presented the 
picture of an apparent imbecile. There was the 
open mouth, front teeth very wide apart indicating 
the absence of other teeth, the thick low-growing 
hair hiding the upper part of the ears, attached ear- 
lobes, drooping eyelids, and the vacuous look of the 
vacant mind. Further reading discovered the fact 
that it was really a photograph of a young society 
woman belonging to one of the best families. This 
caution is thrown against the too ready and too easy 
judgment of a child by his external appearance. Bad 
manners, dirty face and hands, unkempt hair, com- 
mon ugliness are none of them at all significant of 
imbecility, nor of the opposite virtues of mentality. 
In cases of true feeble-mindedness the uglier the 
child is, the more hope is there of educating him ; the 
comelier he is, the less the hope of making much 
progress in his training. 

The Physical Marks of the Typical Imbecile. — 
The typical feeble-minded person carries about in 
his body marks that, to the practical eye, immedi- 
ately catalogue him with unerring certainty. These 
marks vary in number and prominence from grade 
to grade of mentality. The idiot presents them with 
pitiable obviousness ; the imbecile in a lesser degree ; 



172 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

and the moron only obscurely. Probably no one in- 
dividual ever possesses all the physical defects of 
feeble-mindedness. To describe them, therefore, v^^e 
must imagine a typical case of middle-grade imbec- 
ility and making that the standard, expect in gen- 
eral that those below him will possess many of the 
defects in a more marked degree, and those above 
him in a less marked degree. Further, we must 
warn the student that probably not one of the de- 
fects to be named are peculiar to mental defectives, 
but that each one of them might be duplicated some- 
where in the world in some normally-minded per- 
son. One swallow does not make a summer but it 
requires multitudes of the season's signs to mark 
the change from spring. So one physical defect does 
not make a person feeble-minded ; but a whole mass 
of irremovable physical defects found in a backward 
child marks feeble-mindedness with almost fatal cer- 
tainty. Hence, the caution must go out against, 
first, judging by physical marks without backward- 
ness; secondly, against judging by one or a few 
marks and not by a systematic examination of the 
whole body; and thirdly, in the lesser stages of 
retardation, against basing the final decision for 
permanent backwardness on physical marks even 
with a history of backwardness included. With 
these limitations, the ordinary teacher or parent can 
do at least two things ; first, can be instantly directed 
to the study and further examination of a backward 
child and so save it from false treatment and detri- 



THE CLINICAL DIAGNOSIS 173 

mental training, and secondly, confirm to a large 
degree a suspicion of feeble-mindedness by merely 
looking closely at a child. 

General Appearance. — Even to the most casual 
and most unskilled observer there is something de- 
cidedly abnormal in the general appearance of a typ- 
ical imbecile. If the observer were asked to point 
out just what it is that marks out this poor soul 
from normal people, he would probably be at a loss 
to do it without systematic practise in the art. That 
comes from the little-noted fact that people look at 
each other only very generally and describe indi- 
viduals only in comparative terms. "Tall," "short," 
"heavy," "light," "dark hair," "large head," really 
mean nothing as descriptions of persons. I have 
frequently placed a child before a class of teachers, 
have asked them to look at the child for fifteen min- 
utes and then tell me what the child was like. The 
variety of answers received was bewildering. Fat 
and thin, light and dark, tall and short, large for his 
age, small for his age, and many other equally con- 
tradictory judgments can be derived from persons 
who observe daily all sorts of children. Such ex- 
periences suggest that observing children accurately 
is an art to be diligently acquired, that wherever pos- 
sible measurements be made, and that terms as ac- 
curate as possible be used, amplified with phrases; 
for example, not "tall," but "tall for a child of 
nine," if a measurement is not given, with the im- 
plication that the average height of a nine-year-old 



174 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

is the one given in some standard chart like Has- 
tings'. 

With these cautions we are ready to take another 
look at our typical imbecile to discern what it is in 
his personal appearance that impresses us. To do 
that we will proceed with a systematic survey, meas- 
uring first his height and weight, then looking at 
his skin, then his posture, then his gait. After that 
we will proceed to details of hair, skull, eyes, ears, 
nose, mouth, teeth, tongue, hands and feet. By that 
time we ought to know something of his character- 
istic marks. 

His Complexion. — In the first place, probably 
the most striking quality about his general appear- 
ance is his peculiar opaque, ashy complexion, due 
to his poor circulation and his harsh, thick-looking 
skin which is easily broken, giving ready rise to in- 
fection and furnishing a congenial soil for parasites, 
and giving off, in some cases, a peculiar odor, which 
is so pronounced that an expert can diagnose imbec- 
ility by simply entering the room where such a child 
has been for a little time. Excellent diet, free exer- 
cise and frequent baths will to a large extent over- 
come all these defects. 

Along with the skin the posture makes its impres- 
sion on the eye. The head is usually inclined for- 
ward and to one side, the shoulders droop forward, 
the hands swing listlessly at the sides, the knees are 
bent and the whole attitude reminds one of the ape. 
Walking does not improve matters. The feet drag 



THE CLINICAL DIAGNOSIS 175 

listlessly, the toes scrape on the floor, the arms 
swing pendulum-like, and the whole movement pro- 
ceeds aimlessly and without certain decision as to 
point of destination or the path of reaching it. The 
imbecile is clumsy in all movements, slow in run- 
ning, falls frequently, and shows in every act the one 
great characteristic of flabbiness In all his thinking 
and doing. 

Various Bodily Organs. — The various organs 
furnish their detail of defects to fill In the picture. 
Beginning at the top, we find skulls are too large or 
too small; too short and too long; the first be- 
cause of water usually in the cavities of the brain; 
the second, not because of any pressure on the brain, 
but because the brain will not grow; the third often 
from malnutrition in babyhood, giving the box- 
shaped skull; and the fourth from malformation of 
brain. The technical names for the four types are 
microcephalic, hydrocephalic, brachycephalic and 
dolichocephalic. Though popularly these shapes of 
skull are thought to be highly important as betrayers 
of mental defects, they are In fact quite indecisive 
and In themselves form no criteria of brain defects 
at all. If the brains are there and In working order 
It matters little how they are shaped. Napoleon, it 
is asserted by some, was slightly hydrocephalic. A 
professor In one of our colleges Is markedly dolicho- 
cephalic and Is very able. Great musicians are said 
to be usually brachycephalic. Only when other ab- 
normalities of character and conduct appear are 



176 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

these departures from the usual significant. In this 
connection it might be remarked that the hair is 
either very sparse or very thick, fine and silky or 
coarse and wiry, and that the color is not significant. 
The Special Sense Organs. — The various or- 
gans of special sense come next. The eyes may be 
small and set near together, or far apart, often de- 
fective and sometimes one is one color and the other 
another color. The ears are thought to be very sig- 
nificant. The lobes are frequently attached or grown 
to the cheek; the shell is badly formed with little 
hard knots of cartilage at the top called Darwinian 
tubercles, because they are thought to come from 
ape-ancestry; the whole ear may be excessively 
large or excessively small, may stand out from the 
head, and may be misplaced, too far back or too high 
up on the side of the head, though the shape of the 
skull will often give this effect if it is low or flat at 
the back. The nose is usually flat at the bridge and 
wide in the nostrils, though again the opposite may 
be true and the nose present a keen appearance with 
thin nostrils. I have never seen a feeble-minded 
child with a Roman nose, even among Jews, though 
of course there may be some. The mouth is large 
and coarse with thick lips, or strikingly small with 
knife-blade lips. The marked symptom is slavering 
with sores at the corners of the mouth and cracks at 
other parts of the lips. The teeth are crooked, peg- 
shaped, decayed, some absent from babyhood, and 
sometimes too many present, even to the extent of 



THE CLINICAL DIAGNOSIS 177 

forming a double row on each jaw. The tongue is 
thick or thin and pointed, and cut with deep fissures. 
The hands are the peculiar organs of human in- 
telligence and as such furnish the surest indicator of 
the deficient mentality of the imbecile. His hands 
are typically weak, flaccid, useless, listless, lying 
about as if they did not belong to him; if well kept, 
with smooth tender skin, and ladylike fingers, 
feeble of prehension and likely not to oppose them- 
selves to the thumb in any decided fashion at any 
time, and not at all for years after birth. The cor- 
responding fingers on the two hands may be of dif- 
ferent shape, are sometimes deformed, webbed and 
lacking; the ends are clubbed and the nails brittle. 
More significant than their appearance is the imbec- 
ile's attitude toward his hands. Normal people 
find them useful; to him they seem to be insignifi- 
cant appendages as useless as those of a medieval 
court-lady and as devoid of purpose as the tail of an 
elephant. And all of this has come about because 
they have not been energized into countless activities 
by a normal and active brain behind them to tasks 
that have curved the fingers and thumbs like a sail- 
or's ready to grasp a rope. Even after mere imita- 
tive training has taught the muscles certain manual 
habits, there still remains a lack of that decisive pre- 
hension so naturally the property of normal minds. 
Descending to feet we have little to add except to 
note that flat feet are common, that a broken-down 
instep seems to indicate a broken-down mind, and 



178 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

to repeat that the flabbiness of the hand and all other 
muscles extends itself to the cold, bloodless pedal ex- 
tremities, making them peculiarly liable to frost- 
bite. 

Mental Tests. — The third examination is the 
mental test proper. Not that eye-examinations and 
head-measurements are not mental tests, but here we 
come to tests that have always been associated with 
the mind as measures of intelligence. They may be 
divided into three kinds; first, pedagogical tests; 
second, non-pedagogical tests; third, tests for spe- 
cific defects in particular mental processes; and, un- 
less such tests have been included in the physical 
examination, tests of the special senses. The peda- 
gogical tests are just the ordinary schoolroom ex- 
amination questions — reading, writing, grammar 
and arithmetic. The fact is that the pedagogical 
tests are just as good as many others specially elab- 
orated for measuring general backwardness. If 
for example, a ten-year-old boy has been exposed 
continuously to four years of schooling and can do 
only second grade work and no special cause ac- 
counts for his deficiency, he can be safely counted 
on to be two years retarded in his general mental 
growth. Neither, in all probability, will any special 
talent in some particular direction vitiate this judg- 
ment nor disappoint the expectation that he will 
show the same degree of retardation by other sys- 
tems of tests. In short, school grading, applied to 



THE CLINICAL DIAGNOSIS 179 

a large number of children under the same condi- 
tions, measures their mental capacities and predicts 
their future adjustments to society with fair ac- 
curacy. 

Other tests have been formulated to measure the 
mental capacities of children independent of their 
school learning. How far they succeed is a question. 
The system best known in this country was formu- 
lated by two Frenchmen, Monsieur Binet and Mon- 
sieur Simon. The final form of the tests consists of 
five questions and tasks for each normal child from 
three years old up to fifteen, or mental maturity. An 
elaborate system of grading defines the child's men- 
tal stature. If he is two years or more behind his fel- 
lows of the same age, it is assumed that he will 
never make up the lost ground, and so is mentally 
defective. These tests are simple, compact, easy 
to apply and measure mentality in terms of nor- 
mal children's ages. For these and other acci- 
dental reasons Binet's tests have spread far and 
wide. One stricture on their application can be 
made with a fair degree of safety. They should 
not alone decide the feeble-mindedness of any 
child. Binet himself did not intend them for 
such a purpose and specifically warns against such 
a contingency. Taken in connection with physical 
conditions, environmental influences and heredity, 
they are probably quite as accurate as pedagogical 
tests and are more convenient to apply. 



180 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

Signs of Permanent Backwardness. — Though 
we now come to what might be supposed to be signs 
of mental deficiency most easy to discover, namely^ 
the mental signs of permanent backwardness, as a 
matter of fact, we have reached the most obscure 
and most difficult portion of diagnosis. For this 
kind of mental deficiency does not show itself in 
some peculiar and limited mental defect perfectly 
obvious to the examiner. As the definition indicates, 
feeble-mindedness is such a pervasive, such an all- 
inclusive disease that it can not be diagnosed from 
one class of symptoms or signs. Here again we 
meet the same quality which is manifested especially 
in the higher grades of mental deficiency. I have 
now in mind a girl fourteen years old, well- formed 
in every respect, beautiful of face, sweet and mild- 
tempered, expressing in her repose and poise a mind 
and character above her years, with no mental defect 
whatever showing in her exterior appearance, or 
in her manual work. Yet this girl, who in all man- 
ual work shows no want of any ordinary mental 
powers, soon displays by her talk, by almost in- 
finitesimal traits of manner and silliness of smile, 
that "something is wrong." What is it? It is an 
evanescent something, a general tone, a continuous 
permeation of everything she does with a "lack." 
"She has a lack" Is the paradoxical truth about the 
matter, though what that lack is, is hard to put 
down on paper because it does not appear in any 
of her physical attributes but lies hidden somewhere 



THE CLINICAL DIAGNOSIS 181 

in her mind and character and colors her whole act- 
ive life. 

General Signs of Permanent Backwardness. 

- — Probably the best way to come at the pe- 
culiarities of the feeble rnentality is to point out the 
iirst and greatest defect. It is slowness. But here 
again we are in danger of saying at once too little 
and too much ; too much because many normal peo- 
ple are slow in their thinking processes yet have the 
capability not only of maintaining themselves in so- 
ciety but of advancing very materially through years 
of persistent toil. The mental defective lacks the 
persistency. He is slow and flighty. We are in 
danger of saying too little because the slowness is 
not always in the mental processes themselves but in 
their development. The mental defective will some- 
times reply quickly enough; indeed he will exhibit 
a certain smartness and wit in his answers or ob- 
servations, especially if the questions fall within his 
limited capacities and if he is of the excitable 
and susceptible type. In fact, it is easy to de- 
ceive a whole room full of careful observers by 
putting questions to a feeble-minded child in their 
presence, each question lying within the powers of 
the child and worded in such a way that he gets a 
hint of the answer, though all the questions may be 
new to him in the form in which they are asked. 
The slowness lies not always in the working of men- 
tal processes like perceiving, remembering, imagin- 
ing and reasoning when these powers are present 



182 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

and items of knowledge are not being learned, but 
in the development of these processes in the life of 
the child. Therefore, the mental growth of a per- 
manently retarded person has been likened to that of 
the normal child except that the growth does not 
proceed so rapidly and does not proceed so far. 
Hence, we find that Binet defines mental retarda- 
tion of this kind in terms of normal minds of 
younger age. To put it the other way round, every 
normal child is born deaf, dumb, blind and an idiot 
except that it has in it potentialities which will de- 
velop under proper environment to what nobody on 
earth can predict. Set up all the babies of the world 
in a row and who can tell which will be the leaders 
of the world forty or fifty years hence? On the 
other hand, the mental defective is born deaf, 
dumb, blind and an idiot, and either remains an idiot, 
or slowly grows into an imbecile, or else a moron, 
reaching those upper limits in twelve or fifteen years 
and halting there for all the rest of his life. Within 
certain fairly well-defined limits his future can be 
prophesied and this prophecy we have called the 
diagnosis. His progress over this limited way is 
fairly well divided into stages by his years and 
these likewise have been marked out and described 
more or less accurately, though work of this kind is 
still going on and details of his picture are being 
filled in each year. The signs of his mentality are 
given in the following composite table made up 
from a number of authors : 



THE CLINICAL DIAGNOSIS 183 

A Bird's-Eye Viezv of Grades of Feeble-Minded Chil- 
dren Correlated With the Ages of Normal 
Children 
I. Morons. 

1. High-Grade Moron. — Educable in elemen- 

tary school work ; can write simple letters ; 
can be trained in manual and intellectual 
arts ; can not plan for the future. Equals 
normal child of twelve years, or eleven 
years. 

2. Middle-Grade Moron. — Can be trained in 

the manual arts ; is two years or more re- 
tarded in school work of the simplest 
kind. Equals normal child of ten years, 
or nine years. 

3. Low-Grade Moron. — Can be trained in in- 

dustrial and simplest manual occupations ; 
can do errands and light work ; can not 
learn to read or write except the simplest 
words. Equals normal child of eight 
years. 
II. Imbeciles. 

1. High-Grade Imbeciles. — Can do tasks of 

short duration ; wash, scrub, sweep, etc., 
but nothing higher. Equals normal child 
of seven years. 

2. Middle-Grade Imbecile. — Improvable in self- 

help and help to others, that is, can be 
taught to wash himself, eat, etc. ; can do 
only the simplest tasks ; can guard himself 
against common dangers. Equals normal 
child of six years, or five years. 

3. Low-Grade Imbecile. — Plays a little, but can 

do nothing else without supervision. 
Equals normal child of four years, or 
three years. 
III. Idiots. 

1. High-Grade Idiot. — Eats with discrimina- 
tion, rejecting what is not food; can not 



184 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

protect himself against common dangers. 
Equals normal child of two years. 

2. Middle-Grade Idiot. — Able to feed himself, 

but will eat almost anything. Equals nor- 
mal child of one year. 

3. Low-Grade Idiot. — Not able to walk, talk or 

move; will swallow whatever is put into 

his mouth. 
Some Particular Marks of Backwardness. — To 
the description of these general capacities we may 
add a few words concerning definite processes of 
the mind. For it often happens, especially with a 
certain class of imbeciles called idiot es savants, or 
learned idiots, that they possess wonderful powers 
in certain directions. So the ordinary defective may 
possess ordinary capacities in several directions but 
be entirely or largely wanting in other directions. 

Usually his perception is present but dull, drop- 
ping down to greater and greater dulness as we fall 
to lower grades of mental incapacity. Training is 
necessary to get the defective to see and hear sights 
and sounds which the ordinary child perceives in- 
stantly and reflexly. His memory is almost always 
pronounced "good" by his relatives and friends. 
They mean by that that he remembers small items of 
experience which, on account of their unimportance, 
are speedily swallowed up in the larger issues of life 
as it is lived by normal people. Another talent as 
frequently noted by friends, is the feeble-minded 
child's aptitude for music. As rhythm permeates all 
life, so also does it flow through all grades of mental 
deficiency, reaching in the morons sometimes to 



THE CLINICAL DIAGNOSIS 185 

splendid abilities in classical music, and in a few 
cases, to a positive genius in rendition. Music is a 
most valuable means of training mental defectives 
and the band of a feeble-minded institution is al- 
M^ays one of its happiest features. Yet the players 
can not compose, for their constructive Imagination 
is lame, halting, and usually busied when it acts at 
all with fantastic and childish schemes, or with 
vain-glorious dreams of self-aggrandizement, 
though sometimes those talented in manual work 
will plan material things, and moral imbeciles will 
scheme diligently how to do some mischief. If such 
activities can be called reasoning, mental defectives 
have reason, but it amounts to no more than mere 
cunning and to practical wisdom capable of seeing 
the means to material ends but failing in the higher 
realms of abstract thinking, and never able to look 
forward through the years and conserve present 
good for future needs of self or others. On the 
whole, through all stages of mentality from idiots 
up, these capacities vary as they vary in growing 
normal children, and we can always best measure 
the power and responsibilities of these little folk, 
no matter how old they grow, by assigning them to 
their proper psychological ages and then asking, 
"What would a normal boy or girl do at the corre- 
sponding age?" For instance, if it is a middle-grade 
imbecile boy we are considering, we must ask, "What 
would a seven-year-old normal boy do, or be?" 
Besides defects in the intellectual processes of 



186 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

these children, defects in feelings, instincts and emo- 
tions often appear especially in the lower grades. 
The idiot lacks from the beginning the simplest life- 
preserving instincts; he must be taught to eat, and 
the lowest grade will eat anything put into his 
mouth. The higher grades often lack the social in- 
stincts. All of them are nearly always egotistic, 
living in a little world bounded by those interests that 
closely attach themselves to self and its immediate 
satisfactions. Vanity, egotism, love of notice and of 
notoriety are their petty vices, often leading them 
into ludicrous acts, and occasionally into acts of 
unpremeditated but desperate violence. One low- 
grade imbecile always follows visitors through his 
department of the institution where he is kept, sol- 
emnly imitating the official guide in all his acts and 
gestures. Another tried to bribe an officer at an ex- 
hibit to mark his piece of work with a card crediting 
him with mentality a grade higher than he really 
was. He did not dream of asking to be made nor- 
mal. Another set fire to some buildings merely for 
excitement and the possible chance to play the hero. 
All of these instances are revelations of the instinc- 
tive stages in which these queer people live, as well 
as instances of failures of that volitional power 
which would keep similar impulses in normal people 
safely hidden from the light of day. 

Indeed, the final mark of feeble-mindedness lies 
more in the will than anywhere else. In the last 
analysis it is a matter of character. Almost every 



THE CLINICAL DIAGNOSIS 187 

mental aberration, and every foolish feeling of the 
feeble-minded might be duplicated in the myriad of 
feelings and foolish thoughts of normal people who 
nevertheless have the power to suppress them 
always to some degree, and usually to a degree 
consonant with their living and moving in ordinary 
society. Everybody is in some degree and on some 
occasions feeble-minded. Fatigue reduces the best 
minds to that state; a terrible event, stage fright, 
sudden awakening, extreme embarrassment, reduce 
some people to a state of mind very similar to the 
almost constant inner experience of the feeble- 
minded person whose field of attention is limited al- 
ways and whose mind stops dead under any, for him, 
undue pressure. But the normal person is not too 
feeble-minded; he passes muster in the large social 
life of the community and barring accidents that no- 
body can avoid, succeeds in being fairly safe, pros- 
perous and happy. 

Therefore in mind at least, there is a close kin 
between the so-called normal and the mentally de- 
fective. It is a kin that readily removes all repug- 
nance from the minds of those who live with these 
unfortunates. For very soon teachers of the de- 
fectives see in them all the virtues and all the foi- 
bles in germ, at least, which pass with such a brave 
show in the real world, and they find themselves not 
transported to an entirely new existence, but simply 
removed to stage-land wherein the tragedies of the 
larger world appear in the burlesques of Punch and 



188 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

Judy, real to the players as Punch is to children, 
where the sorrows of life are poignant with the 
anguish of the moment and as ephemeral as the tears 
that wash away their sting forever. One knows not 
whether to laugh or weep when he sees a strong 
man, forty years old, stand up against a door and 
bawl like a baby because he could not go down to 
his beloved laundry work on account of a quaran- 
tine for measles, and to hear the attendant say, 
"Why, Billy Moore, aren't you ashamed to stand up 
there before everybody and cry like that?" But he 
was not ashamed and bellowed out his woe with 
the abandon of a healthy three-year-old who had 
dropped his candy in the dust. 

Summary. — ^These, in brief, are the physical 
and mental signs of permanent backwardness. The 
method of discovering and measuring them has been 
outlined in this very brief account, but it is detailed 
enough to enable the teacher or the parent to distin- 
guish temporary backwardness from permanent 
backwardness. The importance of this ability ap- 
pears when it is remembered that by the most con- 
servative estimates, about six hundred thousand or 
seven hundred thousand feeble-minded children are 
to be found among the eighteen million in the public 
schools; and of these about ninety thousand are in- 
stitutional cases, some of them very low indeed in 
mentality. To distingiiish these six hundred thou- 
sand from the rest of the six million who are re- 
tarded only temporarily is of the highest importance. 



JHE CLINICAL DIAGNOSIS 189 

Otherwise confusion results in injury and waste and 
begets in the teacher a skepticism and hopelessness 
regarding methods of teaching backward children,' 
methods which should never be applied to the feeble- 
minded who can not be taught some lessons by any 
method known to man. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE teacher's DIAGNOSIS 

IT IS said that when a new student came for 
training under the great Agassiz he was given 
a fish by the master and told to sit down and "look 
at zee fish !" In a couple of hours he might be asked 
for a report, would render it and ask what next. 
"Look at zee fish !" was the invariable answer re- 
peated often for days and even weeks before this 
master-observer who said "Learn from nature, not 
books !" was ready to let the tyro begin more ambi- 
tious work. If an ordinary fish was worthy of all 
that observation how much more should the same pa- 
tient observation be due from the teacher to the 
special pupil ! He is the most wonderful creation in 
all the world, the epitome of all the limitless past 
and possessing besides something new that defies all 
traditional methods and principles of teaching. 
What that peculiarity is which will henceforth take 
its place in the creative evolution of the future 
world, can be found only by the closest, most sys- 
tematic and thorough observation by the teacher. 

Yet how hard it is to see a child! He is such a 
wild shy creature, untamed, undomesticated and 

190 



THE TEACHER'S DIAGNOSIS 191 

unused to the ways of society. One must steal upon 
him unawares and watch him in his native habitat 
to see him as he really is. Among adults he is in 
captivity. Only in unrestricted play does he reveal 
his true nature. Under the teacher's eye he is likely 
to try to be something different from what he is. 
That is the first difficulty. Then there is the social 
inheritance of the child showing itself obviously in 
his clothes, his manners and the care of his body. 
Through these veils we find ourselves peering back 
into his home and into his parentage, and being af- 
fected in our estimate of his mentality by these 
draperies that cling so closely to him. 

One day a teacher brought two of her pupils to 
a clinic. They were both girls about ten years 
of age. Both were backward and in the ungraded 
class. The teacher was clear in her conviction that 
Claire was far superior in her mentality to Meg. 

Claire was a sweet child. Her presence breathed 
sainthood. Her fellow pupils had nicknamed her 
"St. Anne." Her hair was smooth and glossy and 
the ribbon that held it back from her brow was 
stiff and new; her gray checkered coat was new; 
her dark blue dress was of good material and with- 
out a spot or blemish or extra wrinkle; her shoes 
were polished ; around her wrists and neck she wore 
bits of white lace, and a locket hung on her bosom 
from its gold chain. Her skin was clear and white 
and her large, violet, sadly-solemn eyes looked out 
from her oval face, with the heavenly look of a 



192 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

medieval Madonna. Sanctity warmed with ami- 
ability, and passivity tempered with docility radi- 
ated from the personality of this quiet little girl 
and immediately enlisted the sympathy of every one 
who came into her presence. 

Meg was the extreme opposite of the saintly 
Claire. She was a brunette, a vigorous intense 
one; eyes deep-set and gleaming out from under 
her shock of cropped straight hair that came down 
on her low forehead to her straight heavy eye- 
brows. Her clothes were poor, ill-fitting, old, dirty. 
Her dress was black, bare of cuffs or collar; her 
shoes were worn and scarred; her appearance was 
unrelieved by ornament; her personality expressive 
of energy shot forth in nervous jets of temper 
verging on rebellion. To look at her gave one the 
feeling of approaching a spiny creature, of walking 
on broken jagged glass. 

When the cold hard tests of science were ap- 
plied to measure the mentality of these two girls it 
was found that Meg was decidedly the better. Her 
future was the more promising. She had in her 
undeveloped potentialities, germs of capabilities 
that could be trained into serviceable activities. Her 
energies needed harnessing and directing. Claire 
had no hidden resources. She was good because 
she was not bad; not because she overcame evil 
with good. She had nothing in her. Her appear- 
ance was due to well-to-do parents, especially to a 
painstaking mother. Meg had no mother. She 



THE TEACHER'S DIAGNOSIS 193 

lived with an aunt. She had to dress herself and 
also two of her small cousins and to do some house- 
work to pay for her living. When she had time she 
played in the streets. Contrasts between these two 
girls were due to accidents and incidents; accidents 
of social inheritance and environment; and inherited 
qualities like complexion, features and tempera- 
ments which were mere incidents to learning. 

Obviously the teacher in charge of these two 
girls did not see these girls as pupils. She did not 
look through the exteriors and see behind the veil 
of clothes and manners, through her own conven- 
tions and preperceptions into the minimum essen- 
tials of her teaching. Those essentials for the 
teacher were, first, the powers or processes of the 
mind, inborn or developed, which were already 
there; and secondly, the potentialities that might 
yet be developed. These and only these were im- 
portant to her. The clothes, manners, homes, and 
other accessories, were merely so many signs of 
the presence or absence of the essentials. The dis- 
covery and measurement of these potentialities is 
a mental diagnosis, described in the last chapter. 
The study of mental process is now the task 
of the teacher and she may well begin it by finding 
out something of the mental content in the minds 
she is expected to teach. 

Mental Content. — ^The first thing a teacher 
should discover about a backward child is how much 
he knows. Some backward children are marvels 



194 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

of brilliancy in some respects and utterly incapable 
in others. Their mental defect is not general but 
special and peculiar, showing itself in total igno- 
rance of only certain branches, and It must be 
studied thoroughly by the teacher before she can 
proceed. Mathematical and musical prodigies are 
frequently utterly unlearned in other sciences. A 
young man recently died in an asylum, who in some 
respects was a prodigy of learning and a genius In 
intellect. He could recite whole pages from Shake- 
speare, Milton or other classic writers after he had 
once heard them recited on the stage or elsewhere. 
Yet he was utterly deficient In other branches of 
learning, and it was even doubtful if he could read. 
One of the finest wood-model makers in the world 
Is in an Institution for feeble-minded in England. 
He received a prize for a perfect and cornplete 
model of the Great Eastern, every mast, spar, rope, 
block and bit of furniture of which is faithfully 
reproduced, all requiring the use of about a million 
one hundred and twenty-five thousand pegs which 
he himself fashioned on a machine of his own in- 
vention. These are a few striking examples of what 
are encountered in less exaggerated forms every 
term In any special class. The same extreme irregu- 
larities and mental defects may not occur, but large 
and sometimes surprising deficiencies are discovered 
by a systematic examination. 

How perfectly ridiculous It would be to teach 
memory-gems to the genius In classics and manual 



THE TEACHER'S DIAGNOSIS 195 

training to the model-maker! And how equally 
futile it would be to reverse the order of subjects 
and start the classical genius in manual training with 
the Great Eastern and the model-maker with Mil- 
ton's Paradise Lost! 

The content of a pupil's mind must be measured, 
first, to avoid the obvious waste of learning what 
is old; and secondly, for the less obvious necessity 
involved in learning anything new. All learning 
is leavening. The leaven transmits the fresh dough 
into a substance similar to itself. In learning we 
call the process "assimilation of knowledge," and 
the leaven the "apperceptive mass." The new 
knowledge must be assimilable. An ordinary child 
can no more get an idea from the word "chimera" 
than leaven can leaven a stone. "Chimera" must 
first be translated into "lion's head" and "goat's 
body" before he will understand, and then only if 
he knows what a lion's head and a goat's body are 
like. 

The first and most obvious method of finding 
what is in a child's mind is to ask him. It requires 
natural tact and much skill, but it would seem to 
be an essential part and art of teaching to do it. 
The ordinary daily review of yesterday's lesson is 
one method. School examinations should give a 
systematic, accurate and fairly complete account 
of the pupil's knowledge of school subjects but they 
fail to give any estimate of what a child knows 
about common things, and they do not prove that 



196 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

he has a clear idea because he uses the proper 
words in a correct answer. 

The Child's Interests. — The teacher may ap- 
proach the pupil with this thought in her mind, 
"How shall I interest him in the lesson?" or, with 
the antipodal query, "In what is this pupil inter- 
ested?" The former attitude is that of the mother 
who brought her nine-year-old boy to a specialist 
who found him apparently a ruddy, healthy, nor- 
mal-minded boy in every way. The specialist finally 
inquired why she had brought him, and was amazed 
to hear that the mother held the gravest fears for 
her son's future because she had discovered, though 
it nearly broke her heart to say it, that he was a 
degenerate! The specialist, dumfounded for the 
moment, asked the agitated woman her reasons for 
such a terrible suspicion. Then she related how 
she herself was trying to educate her boy by an 
ideal method which would inculcate in him an early 
love for the true, the good and the beautiful. Part 
of his education consisted of daily visits to a 
museum near his home, where there was a magnifi- 
cent collection of the choicest paintings from the 
best masters. Here she endeavored to instil estheti- 
cism into her boy by having him sit quietly in the 
art-rooms, a different one each day, and absorb art. 
But, and here the poor woman almost broke down 
in her anguish, the boy seemed utterly indifferent 
to the beauty round about him and completely im- 
mune to that method of esthetic infection. Instead 



THE TEACHER'S DIAGNOSIS 197 

of silently devouring the masterpieces, he would 
grow restless, beg her to go, would pull at her 
skirts, and by every artifice he knew would try to 
inveigle her to the cases where the swords, daggers, 
spears, guns and other weapons were kept, where 
he would stand for hours feasting his eyes on 
these instruments of blood and destruction. It took 
all the skill of the expert to convince that good 
woman that her boy was entirely normal and that 
he was merely passing through a periodic instinc- 
tive stage of his life. 

To that woman it was a revelation to find that 
children were naturally interested in certain objects 
and certain subjects at certain ages, and that she 
was attempting the impossible when she was trying 
to inject into him certain feelings which were not 
yet there. Of course, this mother knew, as every 
one else does, that there are great permanent in- 
stincts in human beings that run through their 
whole lives. The aversion to pain and desire for 
pleasure are two such fundamental feelings. With- 
out them it would be impossible to build any edu- 
cation or to enforce any discipline. Imitation is 
another wide-spreading instinct. Its roots lie in 
gregariousness which makes people flock together. 
The first instinct ornaments and embellishes with 
morality, patriotism, religion, custom and art what 
the second founds. Many more of the same kind 
might be mentioned but they are not important for 
the teacher, who, in her analysis of a single child, 



198 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

can take their existence for granted. The fact that 
some, indeed many, instincts are universal and per- 
manent must not obscure the fact that many are 
also transitory. 

By transitory we mean that certain consuming 
interests of a child's life will rise to a climax, claim 
all of his attention and fire all of his plans, and 
then die down and disappear quite naturally and 
without any external aid or suppression from any 
one. To diagnose such a case and to know when 
the infection with a certain set of instincts has 
taken place, to follow them in their period incuba- 
tion, and to seize their power when they reach their 
climax and bind this flood-tide of power to some 
subject which will be then learned so as never again 
to be forgotten, demands the genius and skill of a 
great teacher. If the lesson is thrust on the child 
too early it may not take, and what is worse, it may 
render him immune to any later infection by the 
same subject; if the lesson is delayed it will fall list- 
lessly on a mind whose interest in it is as sear 
and dead as the autumn leaf. Most anxiously then 
should the dominant instinct of any child be sought 
in the teacher's diagnosis. 

The instinctive life of children changes from 
individual to individual. They do not all have the 
same instincts, and they do not all have them in 
the same intensity. Nothing is more common than 
that if we only stop to think of it. It makes the 



THE TEACHER'S DIAGNOSIS 199 

fundamental differences in people, in their charac- 
ters and in their professions, in all the little inci- 
dents and traits that go to differentiate one indi- 
vidual from another. Inborn differences take one 
boy from the farm and make him a rover of the 
seas, another a student, another a mechanic, while 
other differences make him the keeper of the old 
homestead and the tiller of the soil. One boy has 
the fighting instinct in him and will work hard in 
a contest ; another lacks it and will do his best when 
alone. These primary interests manifesting them- 
selves in the impulses of childhood, the tastes of 
individuals, the foibles and crotchets of children, 
must be all considered when the special teacher is 
undertaking the training of a child who has failed 
in the regular grades where uniformity has been 
the rule. Perhaps in any one of these impulses she 
may find the key to unlock the child's mind and thus 
make him a scholar. 

Some scientists believe that the change of in- 
stinctive life follows a law. Instincts seem to come 
and go in periods. These periods are thought to 
follow and repeat the social history of the race in 
its climb from savagery to civilization. Therefore 
it need surprise no one to find that a boy is a little 
savage or a barbarian in his tastes and interests. 
Whether this theory is true or not need not con- 
cern the teacher, except as it again suggests study 
to find in what particular period any particular 



200 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

child is at the time she receives him, and as it em- 
phasizes the fact that not all instincts are permanent 
and fixed. 

To summarize, instincts are permanent or tran- 
sient, universal and particular. They vary from 
individual to individual, and they vary from time 
to time in the same individual. These variations 
seem to follow a periodic law that leads the child 
to reiterate the history of the race. 

A General Instinct. — Play is an instinct so 
widely diffused that healthy children are lost in it 
from the time their eyes open in the morning until 
their heavy lids fall like shadows of the evening. 
All children play, play when they are let loose from 
factories and when their bloodless muscles seem in- 
capable of any more exertions. Sad it is to see 
them; as sad as to see the momentary brightening 
of a sick child when its dear familiar toys are 
brought to its bedside, perhaps for the last time. 
Play is a stimulant when all the doctor's lore fails 
and his medicines lose their potency. For children 
are like Juvenal's ancient Romans who cared for 
nothing except bread and games; and sometimes 
they are so ardent for it that they imitate Voltaire's 
French who "omitted the panem" — bread — because 
of the heart-of-hearts' truth that play is the realest 
world the child will ever find in his earthly seeking. 
Wise indeed is the teacher who dares to follow 
Locke's advice and to make everything that chil- 
dren have to do sport and play. For the special 



THE TEACHER'S DIAGNOSIS 201 

class, without doubt, all tasks must be games and 
all lessons stories ; one the play of muscles, the other 
the play of minds. To be sure that this will not 
be misunderstood by those who have never entered, 
or having entered have forgotten, this portion of 
heaven, let me say that play is not amusement, not 
even pleasure alone, but the outpouring of all one's 
strength to accomplish what one desires with all his 
might. Once in a while a teacher's attention is ar- 
rested by a harmony in her schoolroom, when the 
spirit of work prevails in it and all the air is 
freighted with spontaneous activity, when every 
head is bent over book or paper, and the hum of 
labor is as the humming of bees in the blooming 
willow-trees in spring. Three summers ago I 
stepped for a minute into a manual-training class 
where eighteen pupils were all busy, each one mak- 
ing a different article, while the teacher was sitting 
silently by the window. All were at play. She 
had achieved the play-spirit in a class-exercise and 
it was a perfect schoolroom. 

Some Particular Instincts. — Not only do 
great chains of similar likes and dislikes run through 
mankind, some to bind individuals together, and 
some to form common links between young and old, 
all of which exhibit themselves in the presence of 
a variety of objects, but there are also particular 
interests that are aroused only on the presenta- 
tion of their own peculiar stimulations. Here is 
a profuseness of innate interests among which we 



202 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

can find inspirers of interest for every variety of 
study conceivable. Yet how frequently do we hear 
a teacher say she "has exhausted every effort to 
arouse some torpid pupil !" Surely, she must mean 
that she has exhausted her own stock of knowledge 
on particular instincts, or else her own ingenuity 
for bringing lessons within striking distance of 
these highly charged motives to endeavor. For the 
instincts themselves are innumerable and each one 
of them can be aroused by an indefinite number of 
objects. To illustrate merely what they are, let us 
take hunger. It is present in all children above 
idiots. The sight of food will always arouse a 
hungry child and the sight of sweets nearly always 
any child. Fire is another interesting object, one 
which through many, many generations of sylvan 
tribes has bound itself up with the nervous systems 
of our race so that its leaping flames and glowing 
embers have in them a weirdness sure to strike an 
answering note in children. They all like to play 
with fire. Water, — where must mothers always 
look for their runaway boys if a river or lake is 
near? Mud or clay has its own particular charm. 
Trees call forth an answering challenge to boys 
when their apish instincts are ripe. Stones to throw 
are nearer to nature than their cousins, balls. Food, 
water, earth, trees, sticks, stones, all these com- 
monest objects of life are the ones that dwell near- 
est the depths of children's souls and answer to the 
call of hidden and mysterious forces in them. These: 



JHE JEACHER'S DIAGNOSIS 203 

then should become the paraphernaHa of the school- 
room, the quiver of the teacher who is armed for 
every emergency. Out of them can be and ought 
to be fabricated literally numberless toys and in- 
struments for developing and modifying the primi- 
tive traits which must be softened down and 
smoothed to fit the modern civilized world. 

Temperaments. — Closely allied to instincts are 
emotions or feelings. Nothing about a child is 
more changeable than his humors. Smiles and tears 
chase one another across his face like storm and 
sunshine across April skies. Yet it is true that each 
possesses a general disposition toward one humor 
or another and that we will call his temperament. 

About temperament in the ordinary schoolroom, 
we know but little and reckon with less. The 
reason Is obvious. The system fits the average child 
and no room is left for consideration of special 
tempers or temperaments. But the special class is 
"special" for "special" children, and here tempera- 
ment becomes of mighty importance. Where the 
ordinary teacher notes it incidentally, or hears of it 
from the anxious mother visiting the school for the 
sole purpose of impressing the fact of X's peculiar 
"temperament" on the weary schoolmistress who 
considers her duty well done when she suppresses 
the same peculiarity, the special-class teacher studies 
it with care and skill and into each pupil's tempera- 
ment she will fit herself and her methods of en- 
couragement or suppression. Possibly as good 9- 



204 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

description of the various temperaments as can be 
found is the well-worn one of sanguine, melancholy, 
choleric and phlegmatic, with the combinations that 
may arise from tinctures of these being mixed in 
the same child. The first is the hopeful child 
always bobbing up with great promises of the fu- 
ture, hard to be made to see the need of present 
persistent application and needing almost constant 
suppression. His melancholy brother is just the 
opposite. He must be guarded from criticism as a 
tender plant from a hail-storm. He grows in the 
sunshine of praise. The choleric boy is the hard 
one to manage for his temper flares up in a moment. 
"Coolness ! coolness ! coolness !" is the constant ex- 
hortation to him. The phlegmatic boy is hard to 
move by praise or blame, hard to excite, hard to 
impress and readily acquires a reputation for im- 
penetrable laziness. Usually he is good-natured 
about it all and often has a knack of sticking to a 
task that demonstrates afresh the fable of the mas- 
ter-phlegmatic tortoise and the hare. These tem- 
peramental differences are really the ones empha- 
sized by parents when they aver that "none of their 
children are alike." They make a brave attempt 
under the guise of justice, to treat each child alike 
no matter if he is entirely different from the rest. 
Their zealous though mistaken attempts are some- 
times softened with charity and much love, but 
seldom with enough of either. They should temper 
them even more with the thought that the tempera- 



THE TEACHER'S DIAGNOSIS 205 

ment of the child comes direct from his parents, a 
thing inherited with his nose and eyes and color of 
his hair. The special teacher of the backward child 
must recognize the differences and must adjust her- 
self to them with all the exhilarating freedom of 
individual teaching. 

The significance of temperament for the teacher 
is seen in the fact that people think as they feel. 
"White" suggests orange-blossoms or tombstones, 
according to the feeling of the hearer. "It snows !" 
brings a "Hurrah" from the healthy boy; a "Dear, 
how lucky" from the pleasure-seeking belle ; an "Oh, 
God!" from the heavy-laden widow. All these 
ideas came from "It snows!"; each one came in 
answer to the feeling of the subject. If the person 
is melancholy, sanguine, choleric or phlegmatic, his 
associations of ideas will be more or less directed 
by this temperament; he will see things in his en- 
vironment congruous with it ; and he will remember 
harmoniously with it. A study of temperament is, 
therefore, part of a teacher's diagnosis. 

The Perceptive Processes. — Once she has 
found what a pupil is primarily and most constantly 
interested in, the teacher is ready for her next ques- 
tion, "How does he learn — by eye, ear, or hand?" 
Some children learn chiefly through their eyes and 
are called visual types. They must see a thing and 
then they recall the picture of it in their minds. Oth- 
ers learn by ear, or are auditory types. They must be 
told and recall what they remember by hearing it. 



206 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

Some are kinesthetic, or motor types. They seize 
upon their knowledge chiefly with their hands and 
store it up in their muscles and motor-nervous mech- 
anism. Absolutely pure types of any one of the three 
enumerated are almost never found. Children 
learn through the eye, ear, nose, mouth, hand and 
body muscles; but it often happens that a child is 
predominatingly one type or the other and a teacher 
succeeds marvelously by studying which faculty is 
dominant and working accordingly. 

Examples of each kind of child show how the 
neglect of this simple fact of innate differences in 
perceiving and remembering has led to more than 
one tragic ending of a child's school career. In- 
stead I will confine myself to a brief statement of 
some few facts that have been collected by Doctor 
Elmer E, Jones, which, quite in harmony with the 
very recent study of personal difference in the inborn 
capacities of children, illustrate this special sense- 
difference. Thirty-six pupils in the eighth grade of a 
public school were permitted to look at ten familiar 
objects for a second and a half and then were asked 
to recall what they had seen. The divergencies in the 
results were amazing. The lowest record was two 
and six-tenths and the highest seven and four- 
tenths; that is, children assigned the same les- 
sons and expected to learn them by the same 
methods varied nearly threefold in their capaci- 
ties to perceive quickly and accurately, and to 
recall faithfully the things they saw. Such a test 



,THE JEACHER'S DIAGNOSIS 207 

feasible in any schoolroom with the simplest kind 
of apparatus, will tell with fair certainty whether 
a child is a visualizer or not. 

The same thirty-six children were tested for their 
auditory memory. Ten lists of names of common 
objects were read to the class and each one was to 
write down what he remembered. The lowest rec- 
ord averaged three and a half and the highest nine 
and seven-tenths, showing that some children pos- 
sessed nearly three times the power to receive and 
to recall auditory stimulations that the others had. 
While the experiments did not show that good vls- 
ualizers were necessarily good auditors, nor vice 
versa, they did seem to show that children early 
form the habit of learning chiefly by ear or by eye. 

Another group of children was given each a cer- 
tain sound and asked immediately to respond to it by 
a specified act. This test measured power of atten- 
tion, fatigue, quickness of reaction, and other quali- 
ties. Again the greatest differences came out. Some 
reacted three and a half times faster than others; 
some were slow and regular ; some rapid, but unreli- 
able. Is it necessary to add the obvious that each 
child should have the lesson presented to him so that 
he can apprehend it in the easiest and quickest way ? 
One must read it with his own eyes ; another must 
hear it from some one else; another must write it 
out. Usually, since each child is a mixture of the 
three types, each child should receive the lesson by 
eye, ear and hand whenever that is possible. It 



208 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

certainly is safe to say that all the children should 
not be compelled to learn the lesson one way, and 
one way only. 

Intellectual, Emotional and Volitional Chil- 
dren. — Closely allied to this division made ac- 
cording to perceptive methods is another which 
rests on the dominance or frequency of one of 
the three great processes in the mental life of the 
child, thinking, feeling or willing. The effects of 
these predominances on teaching and the method 
of discovering to which type a pupil belongs is in- 
dicated in the following illustration. 

A teacher held up an orange before her class and 
watched the effect on them as she went on talking 
about it. Henry, a rather cold, languid, triangular- 
faced lad, gave a glance at it and then seemed to 
pay no more attention to it. The anxious teacher 
was somewhat irritated by his apparent indifference 
to her well-planned object-lesson, but she went on 
asking questions and discussing the orange. Sud- 
denly she noted by Henry's face that he had reached 
a question mark in his mind. 

"What is it, Henry?" 

"Was Luther Burbank the man that made the 
Burbank potato?" was the unscientific and surpris- 
ingly irrelevant question. 

A moment's consideration revealed that Henry 
had traveled by a long train of thought, as long and 
complex as the philosopher Hobbes' friend who 
suddenly interjected the apparently trivial question 



THE TEACHER'S DIAGNOSIS 209 

about the value of a Roman penny into a discussion 
of the Crucifixion. The Crucifixion had suggested 
the betrayal; the betrayal, the pieces of money; that, 
the Roman penny. Henry saw the orange, thought 
of California or the seedless orange; then of Bur- 
bank, then of the potato. Such a boy belongs to 
the intellectual type. He gets knowledge by think- 
ing things out for himself. All he needs is a start, 
some suggestion or other, and lo, his train of 
thought has pulled out of the station on a long and 
unknown journey. He is the student par excellence. 

In front of him was a little girl who seemed all 
interest. 

."What do you think of the orange, Mary?" 
asked the teacher. 

"I got a little baby-brother at home and he likes 
oranges and when my mama gives him an orange 
he gets his face all smeared with it!" volubly re- 
plied the little "mother" and it would be easy to see 
the trend of her mind toward feelings, even if she 
did not use the word "likes." Her thoughts are 
determined by her emotions, and an orange, the 
same object that carried the cold Henry off to Cali- 
fornia and plunged him deep Into science, trans- 
ported Mary to her home and the treasures there. If 
the teacher wishes ever to lodge an idea so It will re- 
main In Mary's mind, she must surround it, over- 
lay It and hedge It In with, emotional associations; 
for Mary represents the emotional type. Her read- 
ing should tell stories of human pathos, her writing 



210 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

should be letters to folks at home ; and her arithmetic 
must figure how the poor widow can buy clothes for 
her four children on the pittance she earns. We 
can not hope for text-books to suit every type of 
child, but we can hope for teachers who will diag- 
nose their children and will have ingenuity enough 
to fit their teaching to each disposition. 

While the teacher was asking these questions, 
Tommy, the chubby, freckle-faced, red-haired boy 
who had to sit on the front seat where the teacher 
could watch him, was nearly wriggling himself to 
pieces. He could hardly keep his seat under the al- 
most irresistible impulse to grab the orange in both 
hands. Every time the teacher raised it, his hands 
involuntarily went up too, ready to catch it. 

"Well, Tommy," at last said the teacher, "what 
are you bursting to say?" 

"I climbed the tree and shook the apples down, 
last summer, in the country, and the limb broke," 
he exploded in a breath. Action, vigorous action 
all the way through; his mind explodes; his sen- 
tences shoot out promiscuously and illogically; his 
thoughts are all dynamic with motion. He wants 
to seize the orange, handle it, toss it up in the air, 
climb the tree it grew on. Whatever lessons the 
teacher wants him to learn must be full of action, 
learned by writing them on the blackboard, if pos- 
sible, where plenty of movement is necessary, or 
by walking, or beating time, or in any way that 
will lodge the thing to be learned in his muscles. 



THE TEACHER'S DIAGNOSIS 211 

His chief organ of apprehension is his hand and he 
will take and hold what he can get his hands on. 

These three children are extreme types. The rest 
of the class were not so pronounced. They were 
mixtures of these, partly intellectual, partly emo- 
tional, partly volitional. It demands a closer ob- 
servation to bring out which process dominated with 
them, but it can be done by simple expedients sim- 
ilar to the presentation of the orange. Elaborate 
tests are useful and have their places, but no teacher 
need wait for an inventor to formulate them, nor 
an expert to apply them. When her eyes are once 
open to such typical differences in pupils, the Hen- 
rys, Marys and Tommies thrust themselves on 
her attention. From these exceptional children 
often come the backward pupils who can learn by 
only one method. 

The Intellectual Processes. — When a child 
sees "c-a-t" and can from those letters gain the 
knowledge "cat" he has used all the mental proc- 
esses given to a human being. This is true for the 
simplest bit of knowledge one can imagine. The 
more complex acquisitions are but repetitions of 
these simpler processes in which many processes 
once conscious are now unconscious habits. Mental 
ability of a high order, then, depends on the ra- 
pidity and accuracy with which this simple and uni- 
tary process of knowing is performed and on the 
ease and rapidity with which it becomes habitual 
with regard to certain objects and certain processes. 



212 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

Any observer can get a glimpse of this truth b}' 
noting how exceedingly difficult is the first step of 
a baby, or the first word written by a pupil, and 
how exceedingly easy are the most complex and 
intricate intellectual operations to one who has prac- 
tised them until he has reduced a large part of the 
operation to mere habit. The real conscious ac- 
quisition of knowledge, the real "learning process" 
is therefore unitary and can not, strictly speaking, 
be separated into parts. Certain phases of it can 
be attended to by an observer, and these phases can 
be named perception, memory, imagination and rea- 
son, or any other convenient terms, and can then 
be considered separately. The teacher, however, 
need not carry this analysis so far and treat it so 
seriously as to believe that certain studies will in- 
volve only certain of these parts and not other parts. 
It may be somewhat difficult to see reasoning in 
consciously securing the idea cat from "c-a-t," but 
a little thought will convince any one that the one 
who recognizes it as such must see that it is similar 
or dissimilar to many other symbols. It is similar 
to the symbol he studied yesterday; therefore, it is 
"cat" to-day, is the reasoning involved and made 
explicit. Mathematics, which is a shorthand lan- 
guage, makes this reasoning process, usually uncon- 
scious, prominent and noticeable. It therefore is 
said to train the reason. 

An analysis of these higher intellectual processes, 
while not important in themselves to the teacher, 



THE TEACHER'S DIAGNOSIS 213 

is of enormous importance when applied to the art 
of her profession. We have already seen that cer- 
tain children belong to certain types because of 
their methods of perceiving. The same classifica- 
tion also applies to memory. If a child must see 
an object in order to know it, he will then be almost 
certain to recall it by seeing a visual memory-image 
of it. If he can do that easily and quickly he will 
probably make a good scholar; for learning by eye 
and recalling what is learned are the chief require- 
ments of schools and colleges as now conducted. 
If he must hear what he learns, he will recall the 
sound of it. As this method is not so prevalent for 
giving knowledge he may be handicapped some- 
what. But the sorest trial is reserved for the motor- 
type pupil who must handle things to know them, 
or must write words to grasp ideas, and must ex- 
press what he knows in action. Though he may 
make the sure scholar he is usually slower and 
easily falls into the backward class of pupils. 

Further, memory itself can be analyzed into cer- 
tain phases. To say that a child has a poor memory 
is not at all sufficient ; and to say that he has a poor 
visual memory is not enough. Possibly the trouble 
lies in his vague perceptions due to some physical 
defect of the eyes. When the lesson is presented 
to him properly he has no trouble with his memory. 
Possibly the lesson does not interest him and it 
should be connected more closely with his dominant 
instincts. Then, when we come to memory proper, 



214 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

possibly he can not retain what he learns ; possibly 
he can not recall It at the proper time ; possibly he 
can not recognise It when It Is recalled. These 
subsidiary parts of the process of memory are so 
closely related that just as with the great processes 
of consciousness, they can not be disentangled ex- 
cept for consideration and for correction in pupils 
with poor memories. 

This discussion leads us to the training of the 
memory. With so much popular information on 
the subject, it may be difficult to say anything that 
Is not already known. First, It should be noted 
that we have the simple, natural physiological mem- 
ory which acts seemingly automatically in recording 
an object, retaining It till we wish to have It again, 
recalling It and recognizing it. Such a memory is 
an Innate power and It can not be Increased by any 
amount of training. Whatever one gains In one 
direction he loses In another. Secondly, we have 
also a memory organized according to certain laws 
of association, which can be trained to remember 
certain facts which we now habitually forget. That 
Is done by consciously forming links of association 
between the Items to be remembered. These links 
must be formed according to the laws of memory, 
the first and most general of which Is the law of 
contiguity, according to which law things occurring 
In the mind together once, tend to come back to- 
gether when one of them is recalled. Horse and 
jvagon, house and yard, father and mother, are 



THE TEACHER'S DIAGNOSIS 215 

joined by such tendencies. When one term is men- 
tioned the one that comes back out of the many that 
are possible, will be determined to some extent by 
other laws. If one says "teeth" the habit of tooth- 
brushing may make one think of brush; if this 
morning he bought some new tooth-powder, recency 
may make him think of that; if yesterday he had 
a painful molar filled, intensity may make him think 
of that; if he is feeling particularly bad, senility 
and death may come to him through the interme- 
diate thought of the loss of his teeth. A special 
emotion, like a permanent temperamental disposi- 
tion, will affect the train of association and memory. 
To train the memory one must go over and over 
a lesson; or he must connect it so vitally with his 
interests or instincts that one impression is an in- 
eradicable one because of its intensity; or he must 
review it just before he wants it; or he must learn 
those things congruent with his mood. 

Some of these requirements are more readily 
brought under control than others. Repetition is 
almost the sole method of training the memory, or 
of learning, in the schoolroom. Sometimes in- 
tense experiences are associated with the thing to 
be learned by punishments or rewards. Recency 
of experience is insisted on by demanding a re- 
view of the lesson just before coming to class. 
Feelings are given only an indirect and small part 
in the matter. 

Of the associations under control the easiest to 



216 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

use for memory-training are associations by sim- 
ilarity and dissimilarity. The range of these two 
relations is very, very wide, running through all 
the different senses, affecting sights and sounds, 
pains and pleasures, emotions and ideas. It seems 
so easy to remember things that are like something 
we already know, or opposite to what we know. 
Anywhere we meet the date 1492, no matter in 
what history, it is an old friend readily taken into 
the family of facts we already have. "Tom Camp- 
bell burned natural gas at Barcelona Harbor," is 
full of similarities for me. The man's name is as- 
sociated with what our old school-bell used to say to 
us years ago ; "b" in bell and burn is enough to re- 
mind me of burning the natural gas; "bar" and 
"har" enough to locate the place. The schemes that 
have been worked out are almost infinite in number 
and variety, but they all base their claims for useful- 
ness on the laws of association, especially the last 
two. These two form the foundation for all rea- 
soning. 

At first sight the statement that reasoning and 
conscious, deliberate association by similarity are 
the same, may sound strange, but I am sure that 
a little reflection by any one will give enough knowl- 
edge on the subject to cover his needs in analyzing 
the mental processes of a pupil. The difference 
between the association by similarity in memory 
and in reasoning comes from the fact that in mem- 
ory it leads to facts already known and in reasoning 



THE TEACHER'S DIAGNOSIS 217 

it leads to truths not yet known. In reasoning it 
amounts practically to imagination with imagina- 
tion putting together ideas in new forms instead of 
putting things together in new forms, and putting 
them together because they are similar rather than 
for any other purpose. Thus it is seen how easily 
the higher processes of the mind merge together 
so closely that they defy analysis. It is enough for 
the teacher to note the processes of perception and 
of memory and to study these in each pupil. If 
she does that well she will be able to suit her in- 
struction to the peculiarities of her pupils, which is 
the end and aim of her diagnosis. 

It Is of more importance to know what a boy 
imagines than how he imagines. His imaginings 
throw light on his Interests and reveal the instinc- 
tive stage in which he is living. The same is true 
of his reasonings. Both of them will show the 
teacher the way to lodge her lessons in his mind. 
An ingenious teacher can do it, and the way to do 
it will often be found by diagnosing her pupil. 

Happily, in the American schools the individual 
child and his Innate peculiarities are being under- 
scored for an emphasis heretofore only dreamed 
of but never really hoped for by progressive edu- 
cators. New tests for measuring not only what is 
in his mind but also how he perceives, remembers, 
imagines and reasons are being formulated as rap- 
idly as careful investigation and wide experiment 
will permit. Already there are many systems ready 



218 BACKWARD CHILDREN' 

to put into the hands of the teachers for diagnosing 
individual children. Both of the emphases, the em- 
phasis upon the individual and the emphasis upon 
diagnosis, have long been explicit in teaching back- 
v^ard children. They date from the day when Doctor 
Itard studied the wild-boy of France, and Doctor Se- 
guin set up his first class to teach the mentally 
defective in 1837. Teachers in institutions for the 
feeble-minded would not know how to proceed with 
their teaching without first making or having made 
a thorough diagnosis of each child. What has been 
found in these fields to be of so much value will 
surely yield results when applied to normal children 
and to temporarily backward children. 



CHAPTER X 

THE TEACHER AND EQUIPMENT FOR A SPECIAL CLASS 

A COUNTRY girl, a real country girl, as awk- 
ward and unsophisticated as the proverbial 
Liza Ann of fiction or comedy, one day presented 
herself to a training school for special teachers in 
a large city. She had grown up on a farm, taught 
school in a one-room country schoolhouse, heard 
something about teaching backward children and 
out of the "invisible ether" came the vision of her- 
self as a special teacher. Forthwith, she began to 
investigate, found how much it would cost to take 
the course, saved the exact amount, and one day 
presented herself to the principal of the training 
school. 

The Teacher. — Needless to say it was a shock 
to that expert trainer. It all looked so hopeless to 
her who knew so well the difficulty in that great 
city of securing positions for the best and most 
promising graduates, the need of personality, the 
labor of the training, sometimes the weary waiting 
after the training was over. She delicately broached 
the situation to the applicant and was appalled when 
she heard how little money, and silenced when she 

219 



220 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

noted how much confidence this raw country girl 
had brought with her. There was nothing to do 
but enroll her. That was done and the girl took 
the course. 

When she finished, as fortune would have it, a 
call came to the supervisor for a special teacher to 
go to an out-of-the-way corner of the city, a mis- 
carried subdivision, sterile, frustrated, sparsely 
settled, consisting chiefly of the school-building and 
scattered frame dwellings with stretches of sand 
and weeds between them. Nobody else wanted to 
go there. The supervisor thought of the country 
graduate and wondered if she- dared send her. The 
principal out there was a friend of hers and she 
hated to serve him so, but something had to be 
done and the happy country girl was dispatched. 

For two weeks the supervisor trembled every time 
the telephone bell rang. But no word came from 
the suburb. When the silence became no longer 
bearable, she took the car and traveled out to the 
school. Her friend, the principal, resolutely avoided 
reference to the new teacher. At last the super- 
visor made the plunge. "How-er is Miss C, the 
new teacher doing?" she ventured. "Splendidly! 
Splendidly!" was the principal's breath-taking re- 
joinder. "She's a wonder. When she came we 
gave her an empty room and ten boys nobody could 
teach or -control., -She sent those boys out to scour 
the country for lumber, tin, nails, tools, string and 
everything they needed. They got tools from home, 



THE TEACHER AND EQUIPMENT 221 

begged packing-boxes, spent their own money for 
nails and before long they had that room finished 
and equipped in a home-made but up-to-date man- 
ner and were busy making other articles they 
wanted. Now we send to her any pupils anybody 
has any trouble with and she adopts them into the 
family!" 

And to make the truth seem still more like fic- 
tion, the country girl's class carried off the prize in 
that urban school system for the best exhibit of 
special-class work. This teacher represents both a 
method of teaching and a type of teacher. 

Her Mental Qualifications. — In general there 
may be said to be two types of teachers : the vital 
and the mechanical. Of these two the special-class 
teacher must undoubtedly belong to the former. 
Many reasons urge to that conclusion. A few are 
mentioned here and many more will suggest them- 
selves to the reader. First, the teacher's field is 
comparatively new. The first class ever organized 
for the deliberate teaching of the mental defectives 
was taught by Seguin in 1837. For decades after- 
ward such instruction was limited to institutions and 
unknown to the public schools. Sporadic classes 
occurred earlier, but the real movement for special 
classes in public schools did not begin until the 
nineties of the last century. A score of years would 
nearly cover their history in this country. The 
field is hardly more than touched ; the methods are 
experimental; invention and ingenuity have the 



222 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

widest latitude and the most promising opportuni- 
ties in this educational realm. The teacher must be 
of the vital, wide-awake, facile, inventive type, 
eager for improvement and development and con- 
stitutionally opposed to routine. Two young 
women go to a college for specialized training. 
One fills her avid note-book full of detailed notes. 
She notes that singing comes at 9 :00 a. m. and lasts 
six and a half minutes on Monday, six on Tuesday ; 
six and a half on Wednesday, etc.; that for clay 
modeling the children are given wet clay on news- 
papers; that a pupil spoiled one piece of board and 
threw it into the waste-basket; that James modeled 
a turnip by beginning at the bottom; that Harry's 
chalk scratched horribly on the blackboard and Miss 
F., the teacher, never seemed to notice it, etc., etc., ad 
infinitum. These illustrations are by no means fanci- 
ful but have been culled from teachers' actual notes 
made on their observation of special-class methods. 
On the other hand, here is a young girl from 
a mountain-town. She sees, observes, notes and 
queries. "Why does singing come first?" "How 
can sand be kept moist in a sand board?" "Should 
boys make toy guns, swords, spears?" "At what 
age should the children have a garden?" Such a 
type of mind is bound to get down to the bases of 
methods and to grasp the principles of teaching. 
From such inquiring minds have always come the 
reformers and leaders of the educational world. 
Probably there is room for both kinds of minds in 



THE TEACHER AND EQUIPMENT 223 

general teaching; and surely the ideal teacher of 
the special class will conform to the thinking type. 

Secondly, the teacher must always be further 
preparing herself. She can not stop for a year or a 
term and rest on the fact that she has years of expe- 
rience behind her. Experience here does not count 
for much. Yesterday's experience is supplanted by 
to-day's discoveries and the yesterday's static 
teacher is supplanted by to-day's dynamic one. 

A third reason is the well-known one that this 
kind of teacher deals with individuals rather than 
classes. Her results are not measured in terms of 
grades, amount of book-space covered, discipline or 
schoolroom order, but in regenerated lives of boys 
and girls who came to her hopelessly bad or back- 
ward and unfit for regular classes or for regular 
lives. Her work is wrought on them individually, 
and by their ability to come back to class and take 
a new part in school life her efficiency is determined. 
Her stupid scholars can not be relegated to a back- 
ward class and her bad ones must not be expelled 
from school. 

Her Physical Attributes. — Because we are so 
much bound by conventions we seldom think of the 
physical qualifications for any teacher as after all, 
very vital. We see so many types of women and 
men, weak and strong, entering the profession, suc- 
ceeding in it, and working even down to the day 
of their deaths that we tend to discount robust 
health as the first requisite for a teacher who lives 



224 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

to teach. Still, it is true that health is a prime es- 
sential for any teacher, and this truth is doubly 
true for the special teacher. Her health must be 
of that impregnable, unflagging, un fatiguing kind 
that radiates the joy of living. Headaches, colds, 
blues, stresses and strains, fits of discouragement, 
discontent, temper, vague aches and vaguer long- 
ings, whims, notions, crotchets, disagreeable per- 
sonal traits of mind and character, all the little lux- 
uries of life that other people may allow themselves 
and still succeed must be resolutely forbidden to 
this teacher. Her daily life must be a poised one; 
quiet, serene, free from worries and doubts that 
come from constitutional defects, reigning over her 
flock with the assured power of personality acting 
directly and without apparent means. All this must 
be reflected in her every movement and her every 
tone. One who has only seen such teachers moving 
so serenely about the class-room during the day can 
guess the nervous energy and absolute self-control 
it requires to keep every motion precisely regulated, 
every tone perfectly modulated. No matter what 
sudden catastrophe occurs, whether a degenerate 
suddenly flies into a rage and slashes his neighbor 
with a knife or knocks him on the head with a 
hammer, or two children at once fall down in epi- 
leptic fits, the teacher must remain serene. An in- 
stant's failure on her part would work havoc on 
her nervously unstable brood. Only the perfectly 
healthy woman can be ready for such emergencies.^ 



THE TEACHER AND EQUIPMENT 225 

As to her other physical qualifications, like size, 
age, looks, etc., they are secondary to healthy poise. 

Temperament of the Teacher. — With the 
abounding health required of the special teacher, 
it need hardly be said that she must be of a san- 
guine-phlegmatic temperament. If there is a trace 
of melancholy in her constitution it will surely de- 
velop in the atmosphere of the slow, dull, stupid, 
oftentimes hopeless, and frequently deformed and 
afflicted flotsam and jetsam that are cast by the ebb 
and flow of pedagogical tides upon her hands. Liv- 
ing in such an atmosphere requires the hopeful 
temperament that can see glimmerings of a bright 
future in the worst cases and a phlegmatism that 
will neither wear itself out in useless and ceaseless 
strivings for the impossible nor fret itself to pieces 
against the infinite worries of every day. To these 
qualities of temper must be added a motor disposi- 
tion ; the desire to move about, not hastily nor rest- 
lessly but purposively and deliberately ; to get things 
done, to organize, to push forward with a quiet un- 
ceasing perseverance. The chief emotional element 
required is the spirit of kindliness that naturally 
arises from a healthy body and a willingness to do. 

The Teacher's Special Training. — The special 
fitting of a special teacher for her work should be 
acquired in a school or college devoted to teaching 
teachers of public schools rather than one devoted 
to teaching teachers in institutions for the feeble- 
minded. That must not be taken to mean that the 



226 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

instruction to teachers in the latter institutions is 
not efficient nor at all adequate for the work. Such 
preparation is good, and in certain institutions is 
certainly far better than the instruction in some uni- 
versities or normal schools. But, on the whole, the 
preparation in institutions is calculated to fit teach- 
ers best for institution work. Public schools are 
different. Likewise the whole background of schools 
and institutions is dissimilar and this often spells 
the difference between successful and unsuccessful 
teaching. Besides, as I have already said, the types 
of children taught, and therefore, the objectives of 
teaching, are different. Let the young teacher then 
seek out a school having the best equipment, the 
longest record of experience in teaching special 
teachers, one with a special class of special children 
secured from the public schools, and there let her se- 
cure her special training. It should, of course, in- 
clude all the methods of the special class-room. 
Much as I have here emphasized diagnosis as a nec- 
essary preliminary and eliminator of waste, still the 
student preparing for teaching must not overem- 
phasize this most fascinating portion of her future 
work to the exclusion of principles and methods of 
teaching. Both phases are necessary. The diag- 
nosis is preliminary, comparatively brief, and once 
done needs not to be repeated. Teaching is the real 
work; is comparatively lengthy, full of monotony 
and often discouraging, requiring both skill and 
character to maintain efficiently and to complete tri- 



THE TEACHER AND EQUIPMENT 227 

umphantly. Besides the usual methods of special- 
class training she should learn manual work, in- 
cluding bench work in carpentry, basket weaving, 
raffia work, clay-modeling, sand-modeling, draw- 
ing, water-color work and, what only a few teachers 
have yet attempted, enough knowledge of machinery 
to take apart a clock, odd bits of household plumb- 
ing, faucets, gas-cocks, electric bells, sewing-ma- 
chines, phonographs, etc. Such an array of knowl- 
edge may seem formidable but she is not through 
yet. The expert teacher must add to her other ac- 
complishments the art of physical culture encom- 
passing the usual calisthenics, swimming, a number 
of indoor and outdoor games, and enough skill to 
follow the directions of a physician in corrective 
gymnastics. Closely allied to this is speech-training, 
which so many of her pupils will need and on 
which so much mental development Intimately de- 
pends. Such demands may seem appalling but they 
are entirely reasonable and will In practise be found 
little enough. Full proficiency in all of them may 
never be acquired. In the beginning only the rudi- 
ments need be known. But a preliminary knowl- 
edge of many things is essential. A knowledge of 
the daily demands of the schoolroom will soon be 
transformed into an easy familiarity and a master- 
ful skill. 

Experience. — Whether she is a young teacher 
specially prepared for the work or one from the 
regular grades with a long and varied experience 



228 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

is secondary to the question of vitality. The latter, 
by reason of age and the mechanizing effect of 
grade-teaching would more likely be unfitted in this 
respect than the beginner. However, no rule can 
be made absolute here. A middle-aged woman with 
years of experience through every grade of a pub- 
lic school and a young woman with but a few years 
of teaching to her credit both came from western 
cities for one summer's training in special-class 
Work in an eastern university and both went back 
home and made successes of their careers. Prep- 
aration is indispensable. This preparation may be 
gained in the regular grades and supplemented with 
regular training in some school; or it may be ob- 
tained without the regular-class experience. It 
should, however, be gained in a school or university 
rather than in an institution for the feeble-minded 
where, in the first place, only one great class of back- 
ward children are met and the methods are not ar- 
ranged for the purpose of restoring the pupils to 
society ; -and, in the second place, where the prob- 
lems of the public school system are not met at all 
or, at best, only in a modified form. It would be 
preferable to choose teachers who grew up in the 
country rather than those limited to the city life 
alone. So many of the pedagogical methods are but 
adaptations to the natural life of children in the 
country that at least some first-hand experience in 
country life is as valuable as modes of procedure in 
the class-room. 



THE TEACHER AND EQUIPMENT 229 

The Need of Special-Class Teachers. — A word 
might be added concerning the need of special teach- 
ers and the possibilities of the profession. I fear 
that I have set the ideals so high and have dwelt so 
lengthily on the strenuousness and exactingness 
of the work that it might seem to a young person 
appalling rather than appealing. A very brief ex- 
perience would assure any one of the contrary. The 
evident need of the children, the novelty and free- 
dom of the field, the daily sight of appreciably grow- 
ing boys and girls, the personal pride generated in 
each pupil as he responds to the training, the extra 
recompense in salary, the increasing expansion of 
the work throughout the world, the constant and un- 
ceasing development of the teacher herself, are all 
factors that make this field of endeavor one of the 
most fascinating and most cheering to the real 
teacher aiming to spend her life in good works. All 
the horror of "abnormal" children perishes with a 
closer acquaintance with the little people whose only 
fault is their littleness in mind and often in body. 
In this Lilliputian world of intellect old standards 
are quickly adjusted to new conditions, and the 
"bright," "cheery," "loving," "hard-working," 
"grateful" children are to be found here just as they 
are found in any group of children. The terms may 
take on a relative meaning but they are as real in 
their content and comfort here as anywhere else. 
The genuine teacher will soon find herself just as 
proud of her charges, just as fond of them and with 



230 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

just as many friends among them as the teacher in 
the regular grades. Slow they may always be, need- 
ing unlimited patience and giving innumerable 
trials; but the person who puts life above livelihood 
knows that trials overcome bring patience with a 
sense of victory and of life through growth. 

The first requisite for holding a special class is 
a place in which to hold it. Usually such classes are 
organized in schools already established and the lo- 
cation and number of the rooms and the material 
equipment are determined largely by the exigencies 
of the circumstances. Such should not be the con- 
dition. The whole plan and every procedure should 
be determined alone by the peculiar needs of the 
pupils to be taught. Many of these pupils present 
paradoxical mental states. Their attention is the 
flightiest and their nerves the most unstable. Yet 
their sensibilities are dulled, their perceptions 
blunted, their gift of ideation either nil or very weak. 
This is true of the mental defectives and partially 
true of the temporarily backward. To excite the 
liveliest possible sensations, and so produce the most 
vivid and lasting perceptions and yet not to over- 
stimulate the explosive nervous systems, is one of 
the prime and most constant functions of the pass- 
ive surroundings of these pupils. In the location 
and the furnishing of their class-rooms this objec- 
tive, with others, must be kept always in mind. 

The Location of the Rooms. — The first point 
of attention is the location of the rooms. They 



THE TEACHER AND EQUIPMENT 231 

should not be adjacent to other class-rooms, if pos- 
sible, since the tramp of physical exercises, the noise 
of manual work, the sound of music and singing 
may entirely interfere with other classes. While 
thus comparatively removed for the sake of quiet 
to others, the children must equally be protected by 
location from the noises outside the school build- 
ing. The side of the building with a favorable 
exposure for sun and air must be chosen. Some 
class-rooms have no sashes in the windows but are 
open to the air continually. Light and sunshine, 
shade and shadow must all be provided for by proper 
lighting and proportioned shading with awnings. 
Heating and ventilation of course must be well ob- 
served; as well as that very indefinite but essential 
quality known as airiness. Easy access to suitable 
lavatories is another convenience not to be over- 
looked. In brief, quiet, air, light, space, comfort 
and convenience, these are cardinal points in the lo- 
cation of the class-rooms. How necessary some of 
these factors are may be seen from the fact that a 
whole special class was demoralized by the ex- 
citement aroused by taking a flash-light photo- 
graph. All class activities had to be suspended for 
the rest of the day. One child was almost thrown 
into a fit; and this, too, not from fear, for all of 
them had been doubly reassured that nothing would 
hurt them, but from mere nervous tension over the 
unusual and novel. 

The Number of Rooms. — At least three rooms 



232 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

are needed for a class of fifteen pupils. This com- 
paratively generous number is required partly be- 
cause the nature of the work demands divisions and 
subdivisions of the class reaching almost, if not 
wholly, to individual instruction, though it is not' 
impossible to carry on all the activities involved in 
one room. One room may be devoted chiefly to 
manual work and in it all the work-benches, tools 
and lumber can be stored. Another is devoted 
chiefly to class work of the usual kind. The other 
should be reserved for a rest room and possibly 
physical training, including speech-training. The 
last exercise must usually be carried on with one 
pupil at a time and in a room where other sounds 
are almost wholly eliminated. Besides the rooms, 
a swimming pool, an outdoor playground, a park, 
museums, and many points of living interest like 
factories and shops, are all additional and very help- 
ful advantages. In fact, the equipment for a spe- 
cial class should realize the ideal equipment for any 
school. 

The Furnishings of the Rooms. — Each room 
should be furnished to suit the children. Pictures, 
flags, ferns, flowers, aquaria, birds, curios, samples 
of manufacturing products, all the endless odds and 
ends that go to make up the complex world about 
them should be where these children can see and 
handle the things themselves. They can not read 
and image as a normal child can; they must see, 
hear, taste, smell, handle in order to become ac- 



THE TEACHER AND EQUIPMENT 233 

quainted with the strange and overwhelmingly com- 
plex world about them. Therefore the aim must be 
to create a replica in microcosm of the world out- 
side the schoolroom where, under direction, without 
danger and at their leisure, they can become ac- 
quainted with things themselves. 

Home-Made and Store-Bought Equipment. — 
Besides furnishings the usual equipment of tools 
and materials for a complete kindergarten must be 
furnished. Here, however, a radical departure is 
sometimes made by most able teachers. Instead of 
fully furnishing and equipping rooms the children 
themselves are set to that task. Homely and home- 
made articles take the place of elaborate manufac- 
tured ones. The greatest achievement thus attained 
is not the objective results in the room, but the ef- 
fect on the children themselves. To make some- 
thing from something is something; but to make 
something from nothing is an achievement supreme. 
The interest aroused in hunting up soap-boxes, lum- 
ber, strings, cord, nails, screws, paints, tools, toys, 
plants, flowers, sand, clay, shells, pebbles, vegetables, 
pictures, charts, maps, etc., etc., the use of old things 
for new purposes, the applications of things on hand 
to needs, the invention and discovery of means, 
methods and materials to do things, have a charm 
and spontaneity, a spirit of Robinson Crusoe ad- 
venture that breeds and maintains interest better 
than the most elaborate equipments. The possibili- 
ties of such a procedure and the actualities accom- 



234 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

plished in some places ought to deter any new 
teacher from discouragement over her meager ad- 
vantages. For those who have the opportunity and 
face the need a Hst of tools and materials actually 
used in special class is appended : 

Equipment 

10 ordinary pine-top kitchen tables with drawers, 

36x23 in. $1.95 each. 
20 children's chairs, 12-in. and 14-in. leg. 80 cts. 
$8.50 per doz. 
3 double work-benches, 51x22 in. $22.00 (5 

drawers). 
1 sand tray. 

1 couch or cot. $1.50 up. 

2 teacher's desks. No. 26,875, 42 x 30 in. $11.50 

each with back panel tall top. 
Plants for room decoration. 
20 steamer chairs. $1.50 and $2.25 with rest for 

feet; $1.25 and $2.00 without foot-rest. 
20 3>^-ft. wands. 10 cts. each. 
15 pairs of 1-lb. dumb-bells. 45 cts. per pair. 
15 pairs of %-lb. Indian clubs. 35 cts. pair. 

1 Pianola piano. 
y2 doz. bean bags. 
Yi. ream oaktag paper, 9 x 14. 

1 large jar of library paste. 

1 medium bottle glue. 
Yz doz. lead-pencils, hard. 

Supplies 

Tools: 

1 brace. $1.25 to $2.50. 

y. doz. bits. 6/32 (30 cts.), ^ (30 cts.), Yz (35 
cts.), ^ (35 cts.), ^ (45 cts.). 

2 fret saws. 25 cts. 

6 doz. blades. 15 cts. a doz. 



THE TEACHER AND EQUIPMENT 235 

2 varnisH brushes (small). 

3 chisels, ^-in. 45 cts. ; >^-m. 45 cts. ; l-in. 75 

cts. 
Brads. *^ No. 19, 12 cts. a lb. ; 1 No. 16, 12 cts. 

alb. 
Nails. U4 No. 12, 8 cts. a lb. 
Sandpaper, No. 1. 1 ct. a sheet. 

4 planes, smoothing. $1,35. 

1 pliers, square nose. 45 cts. 

2 steel rulers. About 75 cts. 
4 10-in. back saws. $1.35. 

1 crosscut. $1.50 to $2.00. 

1 rip-saw. $2.25. 

1 screw-driver, medium. 30 cts. 
Screws. Flat, l-in. No. 6, 30 cts. gross; 1^-in. 
No. 10, 35 cts. gross. 

4 files, flat, 10-in. 25 cts. each. 

1 mallet, round. 

1 hammer, claw. 60 cts. 

6 hammers, tack. 45 cts. 

4 try-squares, 6-in. 30 cts. 

1 oil stone. 25 cts. 
^ gal. turpentine. 

1 can stain, oil walnut. 90 cts. a qt. 
25 dowels. 
Cane for chairs. 

1 lb. fine-fine. 75 cts. bundle. 

1 lb. fine. 75 cts. bundle. 

1 lb. medium. 75 cts. bundle. 

4 lbs. raffia. Light brown, green, 55 cts. lb. ; old 
blue, natural, 25 cts. 

1 lb. reed No. 1. $1.25 lb. 

1 lb. reed No. 2. 95 cts. lb. 

1 lb. reed No. 3. 75 cts. lb. 

1 lb. reed No. 5. 55 cts. lb. 
1}4 doz. scissors, sharp pointed, 5-in. $2.25 doz. 
Paper: 

12 pkgs. Prang's colored paper, 4x4; 20x25. 
5 cts. sheet, 50 cts. a doz. 



236 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

Clay: 

50 lbs. clay. 25 cts. a brick (5 lbs.). 

1 jar for clay. 
Chalk: 

1 box of white chalk. 35 cts. a gross. 

1 box of colored chalk. 10 cts. 
Pamts: 

18 boxes of water colors. 25 cts. small; 65 cts. 
large. 

2 doz. water color brushes. 10 cts. each; $1.00 

doz. ; No. 3 brush medium. 
2 doz. box grease crayons. 50 cts. doz. 
Wood: 

50 basswood planks, ^ in. 
25 ft. joists, white pine, 1^ in. 
2 boards, % white pine, clear dressed. 
2 boards, ^ white wood, clear dressed. 
2 boards, ^ white wood, clear dressed. 
15 ft. % joists, white pine. 

10 ft. pine strips, white, % in. square, dressed 
four sides. 

Courses for Backward Children. — By the very 
nature of the case strict courses of study are inap- 
plicable to backward children. Many of them are 
made backward because attempts are made to con- 
form them to courses, and many are cured by the 
simple expedient of giving them exercises fitted to 
their needs and capacities. They require individual 
instruction not only in the sense that they must re- 
ceive personal attention from the teacher directed 
to each child individually, but that each one must 
have studies and methods of teaching those studies 
adapted to him. With this understanding, namely, 
that liberal variations should be made from the 



THE TEACHER AND EQUIPMENT 237 

curricula set down, we can offer a few suggestions 
to those without a technical training, regarding the 
day's program and the merest sketch of manual 
work for the first several grades. 

The daily time schedule is one similar to that used 
in ungraded classes. 

Daily Program of Special Class 

9:00- 9:15 — Opening exercises all together. 

9:15- 9:30— Morning talk to all. 

9 :30- 9 :45— Written language. 

9 :45-10 :00 — Paper language. 
10:00-10:15— Number. 
10 : 15-10 :30— Relaxation. 
10 :30-l 1 :00— Manual work. 
11:00-11:30— Reading. 
11:30-12:30 — Gymnasium and pool. 
12 :30- 2 :00 — Luncheon and rest. 

2 :00- 2 :20— Drawing. 

2 :20- 2 :40 — Sense training. 

2 :40- 3 :0(>— Games. 

3 :0(>- 3 : 15— Physical work— all children. 

3:15- 3:30 — Folk dancing or corrective gymnastics. 

3:30- 4:00 — ^Articulation or story dramatization. 

As a suggestion for manual work of the simplest 
kind, the following has been found valuable: 

Guiding Principles 

1. The purpose of the work should be to develop 
the children, not merely to produce results in mate- 
rial things. The progress a child makes in comparison 
with his first efforts is far more significant than his 



238 BACKWARD CHILDREN 

output. His interest, attention, perseverance, ingenu- 
ity are factors of the greatest moment. 

2. The lessons given below are designed to suit the 
capacities of children of different ages, and approxi- 
mately also arranged to appeal to their instinctive 
life-stages. 

3. The materials used should be, as far as possible, 
those found in the neighborhood. What to make, out 
of what to make it, where to secure the material for 
making it, are questions often opening up more edu- 
cational processes than actually making the thing itself. 

For Children From Five Years to Eight Years 

1. Bead-stringing, using small fruits like haw-ap- 
ples, and seeds, combined to form effective color-de- 
signs. 

2. Paper boxes. A multitude of forms will occur 
to any mind. 

3. Paper-weaving, mats, baskets, book-marks. Wil- 
low-twigs, grasses, long pine needles, etc., can also be 
used. 

4. Card-board work. All kinds of models ; animals, 
birds, fish, weapons for boys, Indian life, pioneer life, 
colonial life, boats, toys. Nearly everything possible 
to make with cards can also be made with burs from 
common burdock, and many things can be made from 
leaves. 

5. Clay-modeling. The clay can be procured by 
the children. Sometimes different colors are found 
in the same locality. Clay provides a most excellent 
medium for developing children's perseverance, for it 
can be rekneaded and reshaped again and again until 
an effect is produced. An infinite variety of objects 
can be made. Let the children follow their own fan- 
cies. 

6. Sand piles. Let fancy, instinct, utility and art 
dictate what shall be made. 

7. Permit the children to take apart and examine 



THE TEACHER AND EQUIPMENT 239 

every common article possible, like puzzles, faucets, 
coflfee-mills, pumps, clocks, model stoves, steam-en- 
gines, etc., etc. 

Children From Nine Years to Twelve Years 

1. The same kind of work as that given to the 
lower grades but more advanced in detail, exactness, 
intricacy and beauty can be given. 

2. With the various materials required, — card- 
board, wood, clay, cement and stone, — make models 
each of the typical industries of the neighborhood. 
This can be carried out in as much detail as the most 
advanced pupil desires. For example, farming re- 
quires barns, stables, animals, fowls, wagons, ma- 
chinery, trees, streams, etc. 

3. With the materials required make toys suitable 
for play and games appropriate for children's ages. 
Bats, oars, sleds, skees, clubs, spears, bows, swords, 
guns, dolls, doll-clothes, clay-dishes, etc. 

4. Weaving grape-vines, corn-husks, rye-straw, wil- 
low, reed, raffia, carpet-rags, cane, etc. 



240 



BACKWARD CHILDREN 



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INDEX 



INDEX 

Adenoids: 41; signs of, 38-46; mental signs of, 46, 47; surgi- 
cal treatment, 154. 
Amentia, 164. 
Apperceptive Mass, 195. 
Association, 214, 215-217. 

Backwardness: meaning of, 13-16; causes of, 110; badness, 
83 fif.; cofifee, 116; companions, 118-129; food, 117; 
home training, 134-138; marks of, 174, 184-189; treat- 
ment of, 145. 

Badness: environmental, 83-89; hopeless, 90-94; misdirected 
energy, 94-97. 

Binet Tests, 179, 180. 

Bodily Organs, 175. 

Breathing, 45. 

Bridgman, Laura, 169. 

Catlin, 94. 

Chapin, 116. 

Chicken-pox, 160. 

Classification of Backward Children, 165. 

Clinical Diagnosis, 162, 183, 184. 

Colds, 158. 

Complexion, 174. 

Cough, Whooping, 158. 

Courses of Study, 236-241. 

Darwin, 100. 

Diagnosis: 163-165; of backwardness, 138; teachers', 191-193. 

Diets, 147-153. 

Earache, 160. 
Eczema, 159. 
Emotions, 208. 

Environmental Causes of Retardation, 38. 
Examination: oral, 167-170; physical, 170, 171; school, 195; 
ear, 49; eye, 49, 52-53. 

Family History, 167-178. 
Parrel, 62. 

Feeble-Mindedness, 164. 
Foods, 148. 

245 



246 INDEX 

Gangs, 125-133. 
Grippe, 158. 

Headaches, 159. 
Heredity, 168-170. 
Hutchinson, 100. 

Idiot, 183. 

Imagination, 217. 

Imbecility, marks of, 171-183. 

Immediately Recoverable Cases, 25-27. 

Instincts, 197-203. 

Intellectual Processes, 208, 209, 211-218. 

Interest, 72-82, 196, 197. 

Itch, 160. 

Jones, Elmer E., 206. 

Keller, Helen, 169. 

Laziness, 99-102. 

Malnutrition, 45. 
Manual-Minded, 61-72. 
Measles, 158. 
Memory, 186, 213, 214. 
Mental Capacity, 165. 
Mental Content, 193, 194. 
Mental Tests, 178-180. 
Moron, 183. 

Mouth-Breathing, 42, 43. 
Music, 184. 

Pedagogical Retardation, 5-7. 

Perception, 205, 206. 

Permanent Retardation, 24 ff. 

Physical Defects, 36 ff. 

Physical Examination, 38-46. 

Physical Marks of Retardation, 171-178. 

Physicians, Royal College of, 164. 

Pinkeye, 160. 

Play, 200, 201. 

Potentialities, 166. 

Program of Special Class, 237. 

Psychological Clinic, The, 94. 

Quinsy, 159. 



INDEX 247 

Rapidly Recoverable Cases, 28-30. 
Reading Tests, 47-50. 
Reasoning, 216, 217. 
Retardation — see Backwardness. 
Rhythm, 1^, 77, 184. 

Scarlet Fever, 159. 

Seguin, 218, 221. 

Sewing, 78. 

Simon, 179. 

Skin Diseases, 159. 

Slow Pupils, 59-61. 

Slowly Recoverable Cases, 30-33. 

Sore Throat, 159. 

Special Class Equipment: 233-236; furnishing rooms, 230-232. 

Special Sense Organs, 176-178. 

Standards of Backwardness: 1, 2; Binet-Simon, 11; individ- 
ual, 1 ; pedagogical, 6 ; play, 7 ; scientific, 5, 9 ; social, 3 ; 
summary, 16, 17. 

Tartar, 155. 

Taylor, Charles Keen, 116, 132. 

Teacher of Special Class, 219, 230. 

Teacher-Mother, 142-145. 

Teeth, 44, 154-157. 

Temperaments, 203-205. 

Temporarily Retarded, 18, 23 ff. 

Tests: Binet, 179, 180; ear, 49; eye, 49, 52, SZ; memory, 207. 

Tonsils, 44, 157. 

Training: home, 140-142; moral, 27, 80. 

Treatment : constitutional, 54, 55, 145, 146 ; surgical, 153. 

Truancy, 103-108. 

Varieties of Retardation, 23-25. 
Varieties of Standards, 23 ff. 
Volition, 210. 

Wilfulness, 161. 



The Childhood and Youth Series 

THE Childhood and Youth Series is the first sys- 
tematic attempt to give to parents, teachers, 
social workers and all others interested in the care 
and training of the young, the best modern knowl- 
edge about children in a manner easily understood 
and thoroughly interesting. The various volumes 
present in popular style the results of research in 
every phase of child-life, every topic being handled 
with strict scientific accuracy, but at the same time 
in a simple, concrete and practical way. 

Special emphasis is laid on the everyday problems arising in 
the activities of the home and school, the street and places ot 
work and amusement. Each subject is discussed by a prominent 
authority, competent to deal vv^ith it alilte in its scientific and 
practical aspects. It has been constantly borne in mind by the 
author of each volume that the Childhood and Youth Series is 
intended primarily as a guide for parents and teachers. 

Much of the literature that we have had in the past dealing 
with such subjects has had no popular appeal or application. It 
has been dry, technical and unintelligible for the average mother 
— uninteresting to her, at least. The Childhood and Youth Series^ 
however, is not academic in any respect; it is intimate and con- 
fidential, the authors taking the attitude of friends and advisers 
and their style having all the characteristics of convincing heart- 
to-heart talks. If they are always scientific, they are also always 
sympathetic. 

In the general field of the child's welfare and 
progress in mind, body and emotions, the practi- 
cal results of the latest scientific study are set forth 
in clear and graphic form. 

Questions of many and widely varying kinds are considered 
—questions which come up every day in the home and in the 
school and which parents and teachers find it difficult to answer. 
The problems of food, nutrition, hygiene, physical defects and 



The Childhood and Youth Series 

deficiencies, nerves and nervous energy, sleep, stimulants and nar< 
colics, etc., receive careful treatment. The intellectual phases 
are considered in other volumes, devoted to perception, mem'> 
cry, reason and the imagination. Such emotions as fear, anger, 
pride, shame and the like are adequately treated. 

In matters that have to do with the child's moral and social 
well-being, all the latest theories are tested and explained. The 
causes and prevention of juvenile delinquency receive fullest 
consideration. 

All the aspects of a rational education based on 
the nature and needs of childhood claim atten- 
tion here. 

The various types of schools, the various methods of teaching 
particular subjects, the relation between worli and play, learning 
and doing, the school and the community, are discussed for the 
benefit of parents and teachers. 

Another group of volumes deals with special traits of child- 
hood and youth, — their reading and dramatic interests, clothes 
and personal appearance, the use of money, etc. 

The entire series is under the general editorship 
of Dr. M. V. O'Shea, Professor of Education, Uni- 
versity of Wisconsin, and probably the best and 
widest known authority on educational subjects 
in America. 

Every book in the Childhood and Youth Series 
is of value to the parent who wishes the best for 
his child and to the teacher who is seeking higher 
efficiency. 

The Bobbs-Merrill Company 

Publishers, Indianapolis 



AUTHORS OF BOOKS IN THE 

CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH SERIES 

SARAH LOUISE ARNOLD 

Dean of Simmons College, Boston ; author of Wayaaarks for Teadt* 
ers, Stepping Stones to Literature, Etc. 

J. CARLETON BELL 

Professor of the Art of Teaching, University of Texas; Managing 
Editor, The Journal of Educational Psychology. 

FREDERICK ELMER BOLTON 

Dean, School of Education, University of Washington; author of 
The Secondary School System of Germany, Etc. 

MARY MARTHA BUNNELL 

Instructor in Home Economics, University of Wiaconsiik 

C. WARD CRAMPTON 

Director of Physical Education, New York City Public Schools, 
author of Physiological Age. 

JESSE B. DAVIS 

Principal of Central High School, and Vocational Director, Grand 
Rapids; author of Vocational and Moral Guidance. 

JASPER NEWTON DEAHL 

Professor of Education, West Virginia University. 

J. CLAUDE ELSOM 

Assistant Professor of Physical Education, The University of 
Wisconsin. 

J. J. FINDLAY 

Professor of Education, University of Manchester, England; author 
of Arnold of Rugby, The School, Etc., Etc. 

ARNOLD L. GESELL 

Department of Education, Yale University; author of The Normal 
Child, Primary Education. 

MICHAEL F. GUYER 

Professor of Zoology, The University of Wisconsin; author of 
Animal Micrology. 

COLONEL L. R. GIGNILLIAT 

Superintendent The Culver Military Academy, Culver, lad. 

WILLIAM HEALY 

Director Juvenile Psychopathic Instttute, Chicago; Associate Pro- 
fessor of Nervous and Mental Diseases, Chicago Pc^iclinie; In- 
structor Harvard Summer School. 

W. H. HECK 

Professor of Education, University of Virginia; author of Meatal 
Discipline and Educational Values, Etc. 

The Bobbs-Merrill Company 

PubU^ers, Indianapolis 



AUTHORS OF BOOKS IN THE 

CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH SERIES 

FLORENCE HOLBROOK 

Princi j>al of the Forestville School, Chicago ; author of honod tke 
Year in Myth and Song, Studies in Poetry, Etc. 

DAVID STARR JORDAN 

Chancellor of Stanford University ; author of Care and Culture of 
Men, Footnotes to Evolution, Etc., Etc. 

C. A. McMURRY 

Director of Normal Training, Superintendent of Schools, DeKalb, 
Illinois; author of A Series of General and Special Methods in 
School Work. 

JUNIUS L. MERIAM 

Professor of School Supervision, University of Missouri ; author of 
Normal School Education, Etc. 

JAMES T. NOE 

Professor of Education, University of Kentucky. 

RAYMOND RIORDON 

Director of the Raymond Riordon School, on Chodikee Lake, N. Y.; 
author of Lincoln Memorial School — A New Idea in Industrial 
Education, Etc. 

WALTER SARGENT 

Professorof Art Education, University of Chicago; author of Fine 
and Industrial Arts in the Elementary Schools. 

FRANK CHAPMAN SHARP 

Professor of Philosophy, The University of Wisconsin ; author of 
Shakespeare's Portrayal of the Moral Life, Etc. 

ALFRED E. STEARNS 

Principal of Phillips Academy, Andover, Mass.; author of various 
articles in the Atlantic Monthly, Outlook, Etc. 

WINTHROP ELLSWORTH STONE 

President Purdue University ; Member of the Indiana State Board 
of Education. 

THOMAS A. STOREY 

Professor of Hygiene, College of the City of New York, Secretary 
Fourth International Congress on School Hygiene. 

M. H. STUART 

Principal Manual Training High School, Indianapolis. 

BLANCHE M. TRILLING 

Director of Women's Gymnasium, The University of Wisconsin. 

GUY MONTROSE WHIPPLE 

Assistant Professor of Educational Psychology, Cornell University; 
aathor of Questions in Psychology, Etc. 

The Bobbs-Merrill Company 

Publishers, liulianapcdis 



The Childhood and Youth Series 

NATURAL EDUCATION 
Mrs. Stoner explains the methods by which she made het 
daughter "the best developed child in America" mentally, mor- 
ally and physically; the simple yet astonishing methods which 
make for the health, happiness and wisdom of any normal child 
By MRS. WINIFRED SACKVILLE STONER 
Director-General Women's International Health League 

LBAENING BY DOING 

The way to learn how to run an automobile is by running it. 
Professor Swift shows how this practical principle may be ap- 
plied to history, literature and language-study. A book that 
breaks up monotony in teaching, stirs enthusiasm, makes the 
parent and teacher see the child's point of view. 

By EDGAR JAMES SWIFT 

Professor of Psychology and Education, Washington 

University ; author of Mind in the Making, Etc 

THE CHILD AND HIS SPELLING 
Can your child spell? Business and professional men think 
the children of this generation poor spellers. What's the trouble 
with the way spelling is taught at home and in school? The 
authors of this book make a simple but scientific analysis of the 
whole question. 

By WILLIAM A. COOK 

Assistant Professor of Education, University of Colorado; and 

M. V. O'SHEA 

Professor of Education, University of Wisconsin 

THE HIGH-SCHOOL AGE 
The "teen age" is the critical age, the dangerous age of ado- 
lescence, when the future of the child's life is largely determined 
and the bending of the twig inclines the tree. Professor King here 
shows parent and teacher how to solve the difficult and all-im- 
portant problems of this crisis. 

By IRVING KING 

Professor of Education, University of Iowa ; author of 
Psychology of Child Development, Etc. 

Each volume with Special Introduction by the General Editor, 
M. V, O'Shea, Analytical Table of Contents, Carefully Selected 
Lists of Books for Reference, Further Reading and Study, and a 
Full Index. 

Each, 12mo, Cloth, One Dollar Net 

The Bobbs-Merrill Company 

Publishers, lodianapolis 



The Childhood and Youth Series 

THE WAYWARD CHILD 
A practical treatment of the causes of juvenile delinquency and 
methods of its prevention, by one who has extensive experience 
in dealing with the young. 

By MRS. FREDERIC SCHOFF 

President National Congress of Mothers and Parent-Teacher 

Association; President Philadelphia Juvenile Court 

and Probation Association ; Collaborator, Home 

Education Division, Bureau of Education 

FEAR 
A comprehensive, concrete discussion of (l) psychology of foar; 
(2) varieties of fears found normally in childhood and youth; (3) 
ways in which fears are expressed and their effects; (4) treatment 
of fear in home and school. 

By G. STANLEY HALL 

President Clark University, Worcester, Mass.; author of 

Adolescence, Educational Problems, Etc. 

SELF-HELP 
Practical aid to parents and teachers in teaching children to 
do things for themselves, written by a mother, teacher and keen 
student of Madame Montessori, Froebel, Pestalozzi, et al. 

By DOROTHY CANFIELD FISHER 
Author of A MontessoriMother,English^Composition of Rhetoric Etc. 

THE USE OF MONEY 
How to train the young to appreciate (1) what money repre- 
resents in labor and privilege ; (2) how it may best be expended. 

By E. A. KIRKPATRICK 

Head of Department of Psychology and Child-Study, State Normal 

School, Fitchburg, Mass.; author of Fundamentals of 

Chikl-Study, The Individual in the Making, Etc. 

THE BACKWARD CHILD 
A volume dealing with the causes of backwardness among dul 
dren and also the technique of determining when a child is bac^-' 
ward, and practical methods of treating him. 

By ARTHUR HOLMES 

Dean of the General Faculty, Pennsylvania State Cdllege; 

author of The Conservation of the Child, Etc. 

Bach Voliune With Special Introduction By the General Editor, M. V, 
O'Shea, Analytical Table of Contents, Carefully Selected Lists of Books 
lor Reforence, Further Reading and Study, and a Full Index. 

Each, 12mo, Cloth, One Dollar Net 

The Bobbs-Merrill Company 

Pttblisbers. Indianapolis 



THE best-developed child in America, Winifred 
Sackville Stoner, Jr., could speak several lan- 
guages and wrote for newspapers and magazines 
at the age of five, and yet retained all of the char- 
acteristics of a healthy, playful child. 

At the age of nine she passed the college entrance examinations, 
and now at twelve, she has mastered eight languages, has written 
nine books, is a teacher of Esperanto, an accomplished musician, 
and is stronger physically than the average child of her age. 

She is not a GENIUS nor a WONDER CHILD, but 
simply a NORMAL CHILD WELL DEVELOPED through 
a system of NATURAL EDUCATION invented by her 
mother, Mrs. Winifred Sackville Stoner, from whom she 
has received her training. 

Any mother can do for her child what Mrs. Stoner has done 
for her daughter, if she employs Mrs. Stoner's methods. 

Any mother can learn Mrs. Stoner's system from her book, in 
which she analyzes, outlines and describes her entire plan as 
carried out during the education of her daughter from the cradl«) 
to her tenth year. 

Natural Education 

By WINIFRED SACKVILLE STONER 
Director-General Women's International Health League 

is a book which every parent should read and study as one of 
the first duties of devoted and successful parenthood. 

Like all the books in the famous Childhood and Youth 
Series, Natural Education is provided with a special in 
troduction by the general editor, Dr. M. V. O'Shea, of the 
Department of Education in the University of Wisconsin, 
an analytical table of contents, carefully selected lists of 
books and magazines for reference, further reading and 
study, and a full index. 

12mo, Cloth, One Dollar Net 

The Bobbs-Merrill Company 

Publishers, Indianapolis 



THE "teen age" is the critical age. Boys and 
girls cause parents and teachers more anxiety 
between thirteen and twenty than at any other 
time. That is the period of adolescence — the 
formative stage, the high-school age, the turning 
point when futures are moulded. 

It is, at the same time, the period at which the boy and the girl 
are most baffling and difficult to handle; when an ounceof di- 
plomacy can accomplish more with them than a pound of dictum. 

As a specialist and an authority, Professor Irving King 
has prepared a veritable handbook on parental and peda- 
gogical diplomacy which will ease the way of parents and 
teachers in dealing with children during the formative 
period and lead to far better results. He devotes special 
attention to the question of co-education and the question 
of handling mature, maturing and immature children of the 
same age. He clears up the problems so confusing to the 
adult mind and offers helpful suggestions. 

The physical changes which take place during the early ado- 
lescent age; the intellectual and emotional developments which 
parallel them; and questions of health and school work as well 
as practical matters pertaining to the conservation of the energy 
and efficiency of high-school pupils are given full consideration in 

The High-School Age 

By IRVING KING 

Assistant Professor of Education, University of Iowa; author of 

Psychology of Child Development, Etc, 

No parent or teacher can read this work without feeling a 
keener appreciation of the vital period in the child's life and 
without being assisted to a better understanding of how to deal 
most wisely with the boy or girl who is passing rapidly from 
thUdhiiod ts maturity, 

THE HIGH-SCHOOL AGE is one of the books in the 
eHlLIifJOOD AND YOUTH SERIES, undoubtedly the 
most important collection of practical educational works 
for parents and teachers ever produced in this country. 
As a guide for the home or school it is unexcelled. 

12mo, Cloth, One Dollar Net 

The Bobbs-Merrill Company 

Publishers, Indianapolis 



CAN your child spell? Spelling takes more at« 
tention in the home than almost any othef 
subject taught in the schools. The drills and prac* 
tiee exercises, the daily preparation for subsequeni 
work in the class-room call for the parent's co« 
operation. 

No subject taught in the schools requires more individual at* 
tention than Spelling, on the part of the teacher, who is continu« 
ally confronted with new problems as to how best the subject may 
be presented to meet individual differences on the part of pupils. 

William A. Cook, Assistant Professor of Education in 
the University of Colorado, and M. V. O'Shea, Professor of 
Education in the University of Wisconsin, have conducted 
a series of investigations extending over a considerable 
period, with a view to contributing to the solution of the 
various problems connected with the teaching of spelling. 

First, SSI examination of the spelling history and abilities ot a 
large number of pupils in a rather general way was carried on. 
Second, a study was made of a small group in a very thorough 
going manner. Third, followed an examination of about 300,000 
words in common usage, both in speech and correspondence, in 
order to determine which words should receive attention in tha 
spelling vocabulary. 

The Child and His Spelling 

By WILLIAM A. COOK and M. V. O'SHEA 

contains the results of these experiments, and presents a tho!^ 
oughgoing, practicable explanation of (1) the psychology of speUf 
ing; (2) effective methods of teaching spelling; (3) spelling needl 
of typical Americans ; (4) words pupils should learn. 

The material contained in The Child and His Spelling 
will be found of tlie greatest value to teachers and to par- 
ents who desire to co-operate at home with the worls of 
the school in the education of children. This work con- 
stitutes one volume of the CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH 
SERIES. 

i2mo. Cloth, One Dollar Net 

The Bobbs-Merrill Company 

Publishers, Indianapolis 



A HUNDRED thousand American mothers 
venerate the name of Mrs. Frederic Schoff 
(Hannah Kent Schoff). She has dedicated her 
life to the work of making the new generation 
better, stronger and more efficient, and has been 
an inspiration to every woman in the land to do 
her full part to insure the future of America. 

Through her leadership of the National Congress of Mothers 
Hnd Parent-Teacher Associations, she is the presiding genius of 
^e greatest educational movement this country has known. 

As President of the Philadelphia Juvenile Court and Pro- 
bation Association, she has had an opportunity to study 
the wajrward children of a great city. She has carried on 
extensive investigations among men and women confined 
in prisons and correctional institutions to learn from them 
at first hand to what they attribute their downfall. 

By this broad experience she is qualified to speak with 
unique authority on the training of children in the home, 
and especially on the problem of the waj^ward child. 

She makes a forceful appeal to parents both because of their 
aatural desire to guard their children from all harmful influ- 
ences and because they realize that home training, which comes 
first of all in every child's life, moulds his morality. If any 
parent doubts this, he needs more than ever to study 

The Wayward Child 

By HANNAH KENT SCHOFF 

President National Congress of Mothers and Parent-Teacher Associations; 

President Philadelphia Juvenile Court and Probation Association 

She shows beyond all doubt that the early training in the home 
can make or unmake characters at will, that homes in which 
children have been brought up carelessly or inefficiently are 
largely responsible for the wa3'Avard children who later make 
up our criminal population. 

THE WAYWARD CHILD is one of the books in the 
CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH SERIES, undoubtedly the 
most important collections of practical educational works 
for parents and teachers ever produced in this country. 
As a guide for the home or school it is unexcelled. 

12mo, Cloth, One Dollar Net 

The Bobbs-Merrill Company 

Publishers, Indianapolis 



IF YOUR CHILD grows up to be a spendthrift 
blame yourself. It is the fault of the training 
received in childhood, or the lack of it. 

But parents are hard pressed forways and means 
of teaching their children how to use money — 
how to save it, and how to spend it. 

Should a child have a regular allowance? Should he be given 
money when he asks for it or only when he really needs it? 
'Should he be given money as a reward or as a payment for 
services? Should he be allowed to work for money at an early 
age? 

Professor E. A. Kirkpatrick has made a special study of 
children to learn their attitude toward money in the 
home and the world outside. He has carried on investi- 
gations to determine their natural inclinations and decide 
how parents may encourage the right inclinations and 
curb those which lead to the unhappy extremes in the 
use of money — miserliness or prodigality. 

The Use of Money 

By E. A. KIRKPATRICK 

;State Normal School, Fitchburg, Mass.; author of Fundamentals of 
Child study, The Individual in the Making, etc, 

It offers sound advice, which any parent will be fortunate to 
obtain. It tells when the child should begin to learn the real 
value of money and how to dispose of it properly, and suggests 
methods by which this training may be given. It clears the 
mind of all doubt as to how to induce thrift in the child, so that 
in later life he will be better equipped, not only for business, 
but in the conduct of the household and private affairs. 

THE USE OF MONEY, like all the other books in the 
famous Childhood and Youth Series, is designed to be of 
immediate, practical benefit to the average parent, guard- 
ian or teacher. 

12mo, Cloth, One Dollar Net 

The Bobbs-Merrill Company 

Publishers, Indianapolis 



HONESTY is not an inborn trait. It is not the 
essential inheritance of children of "good 
families." It is the delicate product of careful 
training. A proper regard for mine and thine is 
effected by a thousand subtle influences of hered- 
ity and environment, home and school and com- 
munity conditions, physical and mental health. 

Experts have subjected the whole question to minute scrutiny 
and proved that the cultivation of honesty is a matter of personal 
application to the individual child. They have laid the founda- 
tion for an entire new "Science of Conduct." 

Dr. Healy, Director of the Juvenile Psychopathic Insti- 
tute and adviser to the Juvenile Court in Cliicago, is one 
of these experts. He gives the parent, teacher and social 
worker the benefit of broad, sane, sound observation. 

The quickest way to a cure for stealing, Dr. Healy believes, is 
to find the way to the inner mental life of the delinquent, and 
he reveals how this may be accomplished in 

Honesty 

By WILLIAM HEALY 

His aim is to' prevent and to cure stealing by children. By the 
faithful description of many actual cases of theft, their underly- 
ing causes and successful or bungling treatment, he shows what 
to guard against and what to foster; how to make a proper diag- 
nosis and effect the cure. He writes with tolerance, sympathy, 
kindliness, for he loves children. 

THE CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH SERIES, in which 
HONESTY is issued, includes works on the special traits 
of childhood, as well as books dealing with various phases 
in the physical, mental, moral and social development of 
the child. 

12mo, Cloth, One Dollar Net 

The Bobbs-Merrill Company 

Publishers, Indianapolis 



THE civilized world is awakening to the rights 
of the child, and to the fact that its right of 
rights is the right to be well-born. Heredity is 
recognized as a factor of supreme importance in 
determining the child's nature; yet there is no 
subject on which there is such general ignorance 
and so much superstition. 

What is "prenatal influence," and what are its limitations? 
What traits and habits may be transmitted ? How far does the 
parent's body and brain and character affect the child's heritage 
at birth, and how far the more remote ancestor's ? Do degen- 
erate parents beget degenerate children? To what extent are 
physical and mental defects due to inheritance and not to en- 
vironment or training ? 

On these and similar questions there is the widest 
difference of opinion and belief, and the grossest error, 
among intelligent people who are not familiar with the 
latest results of scientific study. 

Professor Guyer, of the University of Wisconsin, who has 
studied the whole problem of heredity in a thoroughgoing way, 
has prepared a book to take away the mystery and misunder- 
standing, and to enlighten parents, teachers and social workers 
on an all-important subject. He calls it 

Being Well -Born 

By MICHAEL F. GUYER 

Professor of Zoology in the University of Wisconsin, 

Author of Animal Micrology, etc. 

His work includes an account of the new science of Eugenics 
which is striving for the betterment of the race, the conservation 
of good stock and the repression of bad. 

This concrete, practical book on Heredity and Eugenics 
naturally falls in THE CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH 
SERIES, which undertakes to treat child-nature from 
every viewpoint, and which is the most complete, scien- 
tific and satisfactory collection of books on child-problems 
now published. 

12mo, Cloth, One Dollar Net 

The Bobbs-Merrill Company 

Publishers, Indianapolis 



GET in tune with childhood. Take the chil- 
dren's point of view. Find how work and 
play may be united in their lives in happiest and 
most effectual combination. See how the monot- 
ony of the daily "grind" may be broken and lively, 
wholesome, compelling interest be aroused in 
home study, school work and tasks of the day. 

Successful learning depends on successful teaching. The roman* 
tic spirit of youth revolts against constraint, and the teacher, be 
he parent or pedagogue, can succeed in educating the child only 
by establishing between himself and his pupil, the proper sym- 
pathetic relation. 

Edgar James Swift, Professor of Psychology and Educa- 
tion, Washington University, St. Louis, after years of ex- 
tended experiment, has learned ways and means of accom- 
plishing this and has collected a vast amount of valuable 
information concerning methods of turning to educational 
advantage the adventurous overflow of youthful energy. 

He shows how home and school studies may take on a vital 
relation to the actual daily life of children and how enthusiasm 
for their work may be inculcated in the young. All this is told, 
in a manner to quicken the interest of parents and teachers, in 

Learning by Doing 

By EDGAR JAMES SWIFT 
Author of Mind in the Making, Etc. 

Make the child as happy in his work as he is in his play by find- 
ing how you can appeal to his individual interests, tendencies 
and Intellectual traits, and how tlie learner may be taught with 
the least resistance and greatest efficiency. 

This is precisely the book for every parent and tearfier 
who wants to make study a pastime and not a drudgery. 
It is included in the Childhood and Youth Series, the 
important new collection of books for parents and teachers. 

13mo, Cloth, One Dollar Net 

The Bobbs-Merrill Company 



Publishers, Indianapolis 

H 41 83 <*4 
















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